Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

   Inej didn’t relish recruiting for new crew. The process was tedious, often entailing hanging around in port taverns or setting up a table just outside their berth in the hopes that some sailor was being released from a contract. Availability wasn’t Inej’s chief concern, however, and the kind of crew she wanted needed to fit more concerns than open to work and experienced. Concerns such as do you believe people should be purchased like cows to slaughter or how attached are you to the strictest rule of law or what are your thoughts on dangerous piracy on a ship where the piracy does not promise riches beyond measure. But you couldn’t just flat-out ask those questions on the shores of countries whose economies were built on the labor of people ripped from their homes. 

     Usually, Inej avoided this by simply keeping her crew longer than most vessels would. Due to her rather considerable fortune, and the money….liberated from slaver vessels, she could offer her crew a yearly income. More than that, she could offer compensation for injuries or amputations, retirement funds, inheritance to married members of crew if one party died and free food and drink. (She had, admittedly, not been the mastermind of this system—-it was a copy of the kind of benefits Kaz offered to his gang. Inej had questioned him endlessly about it, after Rotty had mentioned it offhand, until finally Kaz had grumbled something about keeping good help being hard in a shithole. She suspected the intentions were more benevolent than Kaz would ever admit to.) Inej tried to recruit sailors who would be dedicated to liberation, to the betterment of mankind and could devote themselves to their holy mission. That kind of passion inspired loyalty easily, but…no matter how well-intentioned, the sea was full of dangers——crew still died. Or, like Giulia, left to settle down on land. (Some of the other girls on the crew had tried to convince her that revenge was better than married life, but Inej couldn’t blame the girl, who had joined after being freed from the belly of a ship, for chasing happiness.) 

And she couldn’t let Specht lead the questioning and get on with more pressing business, because, frankly, the other man couldn’t be trusted not to take the shortest (and rudest) route to an answer. It was impossibly Kerch of him. 

   Which was why Inej was stuck at the table next to him on a day that could have been occupied by reconnaissance. Or a trip to the private baths in the city center with some of the other crew. Instead, she and Specht sat behind a rickety table in the harsh afternoon sun dealing with the crowd of hopeful applicants to fill Giulia’s spot. 

    There had been a wave of young, strapping boys hoping to make their living at someplace other than the family store or farm. They had been turned away just as quickly as they appeared—-their strength was appealing, but in Inej and Specht’s experience they were never ready for how difficult labor on a ship could become. Then, of course, were the convicts. It would be hypocritical of Inej and her first mate to turn away someone because of a criminal past, but Ravka had no central databse for arrest records and Inej would not risk hiring a rapist or wife-beater. And so it went for hours, combing through the line of sailors with papers in hand to whittle down anyone who would be a fit on the Wraith. (At one point, Specht had declared he would accept a goat with a hat if it had a work ethic and basic morals. She didn’t disagree.) 

   Finally, when the day started to cool and the sweet smell of night air came drifting in off the waters, they were left with a handful of candidates. There were a couple of Ravkan sailors, fresh out of the royal navy with papers in hand, a girl with an expensive compass at her hip but no scuffs on her boots and a handful of older, sea-worn men. Not promising prospects——but Inej would hate to leave port short a body on deck. Manpower mattered, in gangs, acrobat troupes, and pirate crews. 

   She stretched, groaning at the cracking of her bones in her arms, before standing on her stool to address the small crowd formed there. 

“Still here?” She called out. 

“Don’t do this,” Specht begged her. 

  There was a wave of agreements, some more enthusiastic than others. 

“I am Inej Ghafa, the Captain of the Wraith, and I’d like to thank you—-truly, for your interest in joining our crew!” 

“Captain—“ He hissed. She ignored him, and she could feel a wicked grin creeping over her face. Jesper was a bad influence on her. 

“I must commend you for your bravery!” 

    A feeling of unease swept over the group. 

“Ours is a holy mission and not many are suited to its call. There are not many who sail with no promise of return, of a life outside the law, and chasing down those who would hold others in bondage! You will, of course, be paid fairly, but there is no promise of reward and it is back-breaking work. We risk our lives every day—-“ 

   Just as she had anticipated, the crowd whittled away, fleeing the bleak future that Inej was promising them until only one man remained. 

“Great, thank you for that, now we have to go with the old man—-“ Specht muttered, his head clunking against the table. 

     The man was older, closer to her father or Colm Fahey’s age than her own, or even Specht’s. He was tall and broad as a tree, the kind of muscle you only gained from years of hard work outdoors, though not the ropy, lean muscle that was common on Barrel boys like Kaz who had starved more than they had eaten. He had a full head of curly orange hair, generously peppered with grays, almost white above his ears and through his neatly trimmed beard. His eyes were a strange blue-green and he had high sharp cheekbones, with a nose that turned up at the end just a little. He smiled at them, his eyes crinkling merrily at the corners and he had a friendliness about him that Inej sort of liked. She had learned to trust her gut about these sorts of things. 

    There was something about that nose, the set of his mouth, the heavy emotion that settled in his eyes that reminded Inej of Kaz. But everything reminded her of Kaz when they were apart. She had thought the same about the darkness of the rich girl’s hair, the trim waist and broad shoulders of the Ravkan sailors, the smoke curling in from someone’s cigarette——all of it made her pining heart ache. And what a beautiful world it was that Inej could let herself feel this way, that she could ache and pine, safe in the knowledge that he would be there at the Berth in Ketterdam when they docked waiting for her with his gloves in his pockets. 

   She waved the man forward, and he picked up his bag to approach the table. As he moved forward, Inej could make out more of his features——the harsh scars across his cheek and neck around his collarbones and the whiteness of his left eye. Blind, then, at least in that eye. Her eyes dropped to that side, the sleeve of his shirt pinned up before the bend of his elbow, the empty space where his forearm and hand should have been. Inej didn’t let her surprise cross her face, (she had always been annoyed when a person looked shocked at the cane in Kaz’s hand, when they were out together) but the man’s face tightened, making it clear that he had noticed her…noticing. 

“You’d be surprised at what a cripple can do,” He said cheerfully, though the cheer didn’t reach his eyes. 

“No, we really wouldn’t,” Specht muttered, exchanging glances with Inej in a way that suggested they were both thinking of the damage the vicious, sharp boy with his bone-breaking cane could do in an afternoon.  

”Can you manage well?” Inej asked him. She was willing to accommodate any needs he may have, but if it was a new injury and he was still adjusting, that was a delay they couldn’t  afford. 

“Oh, yes,” He agreed, a bit of a strange, lilting accent creeping into his Ravkan. “Been like this for twelve years now, working on a large ship like your own, so I’ll have no trouble with the work.” 

   She nodded, holding out her hand for his papers to hand to Specht. He looked them over. 

“Kerch national, age….forty-six—“ Specht looked at him. “You look old for forty-six.” 

“Specht!” Inej snapped. 

The man shrugged. “Life has been a harsh teacher.” 

“It often is,” Inej agreed. 

“I know you from somewhere,” Specht said thoughtfully, scratching at his bearded cheek. 

Florian’s smile grew a little tenser. “No, I really doubt that.” 

“Where are you from?” 

“Kerch.” 

“Yeah, I got that. I mean, where—-“ 

“You said that you have experience on a vessel of this size?” Inej asked, cutting Specht off before he ran the man off with his incessant questions. 

“Yes. I, uh, was raised on a ship, really. Went to sea when I was eleven, worked as crew for eight years. I went ashore, married, had children and tended to some family land. Then I rejoined at thirty…..thirty-four, I believe.”

     Eleven seemed quite young to start out, but Kerch children (if they did not come from a world of wealth and privilege) usually started work even younger. Kaz himself had started work at nine, and she knew that poorer families would often indenture out their youngest sons to merchant navy ships as “apprentices.” Often, these boys were grunt workers, swabbing decks and being forced into the rigging to lead them through rough waters because of their small size. Most of them died, which meant their parents received a small settlement from the Kerch government, and if they didn’t died, eighty percent of their salaries were sent to the families that had signed their lives away. 

“Merchant navy, or—-“ 

“I know!” Specht said gleefully, apparently finally remembering where he remembered the man from. “You’re Sietske’s nephew.” 

The older man sighed, looking defeated. “Yes.” 

“The fuck are you doing applying to our crew, then? Wouldn’t figure the old battle axe would let you go that easily.” He glanced at Inej, and must have noticed ber confusion. “Sietske—she’s a privateer, works on contracts with Kerch and Ravka on The Golden Tulip. She’s a fucking legend, and more than a bit territorial.” 

    Inej had heard of her, actually. The woman had a string of brutal stories attached to her, decades of a life lived at the mercies of the violent waves, a life that had made her hard and conniving and cold. Muoike, they called her, apparently it meant Auntie in some obscure Kerch dialect. It was a little too close to Tante for Inej’s taste, but luckily the woman didn’t deal in flesh, so their paths had never had to cross. 

“And a difficult woman to live and work with,” He said sharply. “We’ve had a falling out.” 

“Over what?” 

“Not any of your business.” 

Inej cut in, voice firm, “It is if you aim to join our crew. I’d like to know any possible issues that may crop up, especially if they involve a woman as ruthless and resourceful as your aunt. ” 

He scrubbed at the side of his face with agitation. “She doesn’t want me to go back to Ketterdam, thinks it’s soft of me. Weak.” 

“Why? What’s special about Ketterdam?” Inej asked him. Maybe a better question would have been——what horrible thing happened to you in Ketterdam that your family never wanted you to return? There were a host of possible answers that came to mind, each worse than the last. 

”My—-” He sighed, mouth growing tight, and cast his eyes to his boots. “My children died there some years ago, and…well, I suppose I feel like I’m ready to go back, to say goodbye. And to keep someone else’s children from dying there. You do that, don’t you? Save children?” 

    Inej’s heart ached for the man, for the hurt in his eyes that you couldn’t fake. The Kaz in the back of her head sneered at her compassion, but Inej ignored him when he was being like that. This wouldn’t be the first member of crew to join because of a loss, and Inej was certain he wouldn’t be the last. It was the kind of thing that changed you forever, the kind that drew your life to a screeching halt until you were filled with the sense that you needed to do something——anything to make it feel better. To make sure it never happened to anyone else. She could see that desperate gleam in his eyes. Inej vowed to pray to the patron of lost children, Ketterdam’s own Sankta Margaretha, to guard the souls of his children. 

“Among other things. I wasn’t lying——it’s a dangerous life, and I can’t promise you’ll walk away at the end of the voyage.The hours are long, the work is hard, and the pay is less than desired. You’ll see the worst the world has to offer. You won’t be safe, but you’ll be doing good.” 

He nodded, grinning crookedly. “What is it they say? Better a terrible truth than a kind lie.” 

   Inej laughed in surprise, her heart aching to remember Kaz standing there in Tante Heleen’s office—-ready to walk her to the Slat, away from the hell of the Menagerie. 

“I have heard that before, now that you mention it.” 

    Specht stamped his papers, handing them back to Inej. She glanced at them, eyebrows raising in surprise when the name there called forth memories of a con, a farm in the Kerch countryside registered under a false name. Of an R, in faded blue-black ink on the swell of Kaz’s arm. Maybe they were related? 

“Is that a common surname? In Kerch?” She asked. 

He shrugged. “It used to be, in the South. Used to a whole gaggle of us, but drink and work and debts have picked us all off. My aunt and I are the only ones left that I know of.” 

   She tamped down her disappointment. Inej shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up——Kaz himself had told her that he had no family left. 

“Well, then, welcome aboard, Mr. Rietveld.” 

   Rietveld, or Florian as he insisted everyone call him, had settled into the crew of the Wraith well. It was always a risk, adding a new member, especially a man. By the nature of the mission, Inej’s crew was largely female, and the introduction of a new man had gone badly in the past. When a crew had established dynamics and traditions, any change could lead to upset amongst the crew that could lead to unacceptable quarreling or worse. 

    Luckily, Florian was a gentle, soft-spoken man who, despite his considerable size, was not threatening in the slightest. He was frightening in a fight, of course, serving as much-needed muscle in skirmishes during raids but that ferocity never carried over to dinner. He worked like he was three men, dutiful and dedicated, moving about the deck and rigging with the ease of a man who had been at sea his whole life. The lack of an arm and full range of vision didn’t seem to slow him down at all. He could climb, fight, eat, fold clothes, scrub decks and play the fiddle like a madman during lazy night gatherings on the deck. He had a deep, sweet voice that carried through the whole ship, singing them Kerch lullabies and love songs to keep them company as they worked. To the crew, he could always be counted on for advice without being condescending and a patient ear for petty arguments. The younger crew liked him so much they began calling him Da Rietveld, which made his lips curl down just briefly before smiling again, sorrow lingering in his eyes. 

    He was a good addition to the crew, and since he was often assigned to overnight shifts with her, Inej began to look forward to long conversations with him in the crow’s nest. She shared her own story with him one night, the one the rest of the crew knew already, and he had listened silently, nodding along to her words. After she had finished, he said nothing, which was better than if he had said anything at all and it was during one of these night shifts that Florian shook Inej’s world to the core. 

   She hadn’t meant to say anything about it, to ever ask after his children when it clearly still devastated him, but they had all noticed his poor mood that day. 

“Are you alright today, Florian?” She asked as she climbed into the basket with him. 

   He hummed in the affirmative, but didn’t meet her eyes—-continuing to scan the horizon for trouble. 

“You seem sad,” She countered softly. His frown grew deeper, and he shrugged. 

“Just the weather, I suppose.” 

   She let it go, since he clearly didn’t want to share with her. They sat in silence together for nearly an hour while Florian fidgeted more than usual, before finally speaking. 

“It was a plow.” 

“Sorry?” Inej asked in confusion. 

“What did the…the damage,” He clarified, waving his hand over his left side. “I was in the field, plowing—-there’s such a short window to plant tulips, you have to wait until there’s a cold snap and the ground has started to get a little hard so it’s hard work. I was walking along and something, not even sure what it was, spooked the horse. She reared back, and I lost my balance, fell over and got caught in the gears. Ripped my arm clear off my body, tore my stomach open and my guts spilled out across the ground, and metal got into my eye.” 

“Saints,” Inej breathed. 

    She had seen the damage, the way Florian held himself and adapted to complete the simplest tasks. It seemed strange that something so horrible could be caused by nothing. A horse spooking—-that’s all it took to cripple a man. It hardly seemed fair. 

“Should have died—-almost did. My….son, the littlest one, he was there. Saw the whole thing and ran to get a neighbor, but I was gone to the world by then.” He struck a match against the mast, lighting a cigarette. “Woke up a few days later and they were gone. Apparently, the magistrate had been told my death was all but guaranteed and signed over all the property to my eldest. He was thirteen—-you’re a man under the laws of Ghezen at thirteen, did you know that?” 

“No, I didn’t,” She murmured. Thirteen——saints, it felt like a century since she was thirteen. She had been fourteen at the Menagerie, and she had certainly been a child. A child forced to become a woman before her time. 

“They would have tried to trick him out of it, of course. Got him to sign to an apprenticeship that would have gone nowhere and meant working yourself into the grave while never keeping your wages. Shipped his little brother off to an orphan’s home. That was probably what convinced the silly boy to head for Ketterdam. They were always together, since the day he was born they were brothers true through thick and thin. Never went anywhere without each other. Ketterdam would have been dangerous, but they could’ve been together in Ketterdam.” 

“City of possibilities, so I’ve heard,” Inej said bitterly, recalling her own entry to the city, Jesper’s gambling, Kaz’s reign of terror. If Ketterdam was a mother, like Kaz joked, then she was a cruel one—-not caring if her children lived or died. 

He snorted, before taking a long drag. “I woke up weeks later, apparently I just barely made it, and they were gone and no one had heard from the boys since they left. When I went home the farm had already been sold off. To some man in Ketterdam named….Jakob Hertzoon of all things.“ 

   Inej’s blood ran cold in her veins. Hertzoon. Florian didn’t know, how could he possibly, that Inej would know that name. That she would know that Jakob Hertzoon was really just Pekka Rollins, running a con he had probably run a million times, not knowing it would be his downfall. Not knowing that tricked two naive farm boys out of their inheritance would create a horrible shadow that dogged his steps for years until he could destroy him soundly. But Inej did know. 

    Two farm boys—-father dead in some tragedy, set off to Ketterdam in search of a better life only to sell it all away to Pekka Rollins in the guise of a kindly father. She could see now, knowing Florian and his gentle eyes and patient temper, how the boys would have clung to any man that reminded them of their tender father. Saints, how scared they must have been without him, without his guiding hands. Her heart ached for them, sick and dirty, starving and dying out on the street until only one of them walked away. Saints protect and guard the spirit of Jordie Rietveld, she prayed not for the first time. 

   How terrible that if they had just waited, if Jordie had just waited, tragedy could have been avoided. But then wasn’t life like that? If Papa hadn’t let her sleep in rather than tending to her chores, Inej would not be sitting here now. 

    But maybe it wasn’t. She was getting ahead of herself. After all, Rollins was a career criminal, odds were that he had pulled that same con thousands of times, on more boys than Jordie and Kaz. He hadn’t even remembered them or their names, not even when his son’s life was on the line. 

   But what were the odds? 

“——and of course, I wracked up a monumental debt in the meantime. Not to mention the debt from the healers. I knew my aunt would take me back, arm or no arm, but——“ 

“What were their names?” Inej cut him off. 

He stared at her in surprise, before smiling. “Tell you what——I’ll do you one better. Thirteen—-it’s an important year for a Kerch boy, and girl but I had no girls, and so to commemorate it——“ 

   He dug in the pocket of his rough waistcoat before pulling out a locket on a chain—-the kind that could be hooked through a buttonhole like a pocket watch. He flipped it open, revealing a set of pictures. 

“I paid for a photographer to come out to the house, quite an expense in that day, but worth it now that I have nothing else of them. Especially because Jordan refused to get his picture taken if his little brother didn’t have to.” 

    Jordan——saints defend him. 

    She leaned in, eyes drinking in the face of a grinning boy. It had been colored, likely done by the photographer in his studio, and it was one of the better ones she had seen so she assumed that it was fairly accurate. He was lanky but sturdy looking, like he was no stranger to hard work. There was a generous smattering of freckles across his sharp cheeks and straight nose, his blue-green eyes lit up with the mischief lurking in his lopsided grin. He was so….young. 

   She traced a reverent finger over one of his orange curls. It was always good to put a face to a name, and this name she had heard a million times, in hushed whispers on rooftops or whimpered in the throes of night terrors. 

“He looks like you,” She whispered. 

Florian smiled proudly. “He did, didn’t he? Jordan, after my grandfather, Johannes after my father-in-law.” 

   Johannes. Jordan Johannes Rietveld. That wasn't a coincidence. If it was, it would be the biggest coincidence in the world. 

   He looked like Kaz did, when he smiled and joked around with Jesper or argued with Inej over something petty and small just for the fun of it all. Not twins…but brothers, certainly. 

“---and there?” He said, pointing at the picture to the right. “That's my baby, Kaspar Lieven. His mother died giving birth to him so I had to raise him all on my own. He was the spitting image of her—even named him after her, Kaspara. No one called him that, of course, it was too big of a name for the little fellow I think. Maybe he would have grown into it, who knows, but we all called him—” 

“Kaz.” Inej finished, her voice barely a whisper. 

   It was a tiny child, for nine, smaller than he should have been. He was pale and thin, with sharp little features that made him look like a fox and Florian’s upturned nose. His cheeks had freckles, just like his brother’s, his dark hair a shock of black silk curling around his ears. And there, on his chin, was a little scar. He had gotten it from jumping from the back of a moving cart and scraping his chin on the edge of the bed, just before he fell backwards into a puddle of mud. It had been a bet, he said, from a friend, but he’d sprained his ankle and his father had scolded him for hours. 

   It had been funny, when he told them the story, just the slightest bit drunk and uncharacteristically outgoing. 

   Kaz Brekker’s dark eyes set in the face of a young boy stared back at her from behind the pane of glass, just as arresting and intelligent as they were now, demanding answers. Inej had none to give him.  

Chapter Text

   Inej couldn’t find a way to bring it up. How could she? Was she supposed to just go up to Florian and say, oh, have I mentioned, I think your younger son is actually alive in Ketterdam and thinks you’re dead and the rest of his family is dead and spent nearly a decade searching for revenge and is the head of the largest gang in Kerch? 

(Maybe she should leave out the bit about the gang. Well, she probably couldn’t—kind of hard to miss the sharp-eyed, gun-toting mob at Kaz’s back, following his every command.)

  She couldn’t find a way to bring it up, and she knew that every day she didn’t, it would only get worse—would make the revelation more painful. She couldn’t bring it up, because ever since Florian had shown her that carefully preserved photograph of a sharp-eyed, serious little boy, she had spent every moment trying to find hints of him in his father. 

   It was a natural thing to do when you met a friend’s parents— (and Kaz was her friend, among other things), to compare them. Colm was tall and handsome and confident, like his son—-Jesper’s frame and face a sweet reminder of the love his parents had shared. Marya, like Wylan, was creative and sensitive, caring (and, rather unfortunately, there had been just the hint of his father in him—-in the glint of the eyes that were kind on Wylan but unfeeling on Van Eck.) Kaz had commented more than once that Inej looked just like her mother, but that her father must have read her more bedtime stories growing up and then refused to elaborate. (She had only realized years after the first time, and several thousand nautical miles out of punching range, that he was calling them both long-winded and idealistic. Which was rude, if not untrue.) She had thought that she would never get the chance to do that with any of Kaz’s family, that it would never be possible to comb out the bits of him that were genetic, the influence of his parents or his brother, or what things had been forced on him to survive in Ketterdam. And, understandably, it all hurt Kaz too much to talk about, though he had been trying. He had only just begun to tell her stories about Jordie, to stumbingly describe his face and his favorite foods and the books he liked to read, in the dark of the bedroom, where they curled around each other like lovers did. 

   Florian could whistle any sort of tune at an almost ear-piercing volume, just like Kaz did when he was trying to annoy Jesper (it always worked). Florian would raise just one eyebrow in response to a stupid question in a way that made the asker cringe in humiliation without a single word being spoken, just like Kaz did. Florian got the same dimples on his cheeks when he smiled that Kaz did, and it made Inej’s heart ache. She loved those dimples—it was a little mind-boggling to learn where exactly he had gotten them from.  

  This drug on for weeks, Inej logging every little comment, every twitch of a brow, every quirk of the lips, and each week the Wraith crept ever-closer to Ketterdam. And to Kaz. 

   It was a miracle—that Kaz and his father would get another chance to reunite, the same way Inej had been able to reunite with her own parents after years of being separated by an ocean. A miracle, truly, and Inej had gotten to her knees more than once to pray her thanks to Sankta Margaretha for paying this kindness to one of her lost children, but she was sure that Kaz would not agree that this was a miracle in any sense of the word.  Saints, how would she explain this to Kaz? Somehow, she didn’t think he would take it well. He probably wouldn’t even believe it—-Inej wouldn’t. Inej barely believed it herself, and she was the one who made the connection, but she needed to say something if there was any chance of this reunion ending in something other than blood and broken hearts. 

   She searched the ship for him at shift change, right after Florian would get off watch duty for the night, and found him on bended knees by the mast, his forehead pressed to the wood of the deck. Inej looked him over for any signs of distress or pain, but he was breathing deeply and evenly, his lips moving to form a steady stream of unfamiliar words. 

“Florian?” She called gently, trying not to startle the man. 

   He sat up, face confused for just a moment before smiling at her. 

“Captain! Sorry, I was just—-” He looked almost embarrassed. “Well. Praying, foolish as it might be.” 

   Her heart fluttered, and she smiled at him. Inej herself had often taken a moment to pray to her saints out on the deck, surrounded by the beauty and power of the sea. There was something humbling and divine about riding along the waves. She knelt beside him, folding her hands in her lap, and the tension in his shoulders eased. 

“My father would say that praying is never foolish.” 

“Yes, well, I believe that your saints are a little more communicative than Ghezen,” Florian said wryly. “Most of the time it’s like throwing up a pair of dice and hoping they land on the edges.” 

“I—” She hesitated. Though maybe she should feel ashamed for it, she had never really considered that the Kerch had a faith. Only greed and the idol they had created to justify their exploitation of others. “I never knew that anyone actually believed in Ghezen.” 

  Florian, thankfully, didn’t seem offended and laughed. 

“I don’t think most in the city do, to tell you the truth. Not sure I do. He’s a cruel master, Ghezen—at least, that’s what those merchers in Ketterdam would have you believe. In the cities, they worship him as the golden hand of the market, only rewarding those who are deserving with wealth and power. In the south, where I’m from, Ghezen is….” He paused, clearly trying to put words to something sacred. Wasn’t that a strange thought? Ghezen and sacred in the same breath? “Well, in the south they say, Ghezen is the mother and the son, the maid and the crone,  the boy going off to war, the skies, the waters, the fires swallowing forests, pearls inside shells, a sudden summer storm, birds in the trees—dice falling to the ground.” 

   Inej considered his words—and had to press down her amusement that if she commented that this version of Ghezen reminded her of the saints, each to their purpose in infinite combinations, to a “pious” Kerchman, they would probably have a stroke. She tried to imagine it, worshipping a force of nature—the idea of something, rather than the solid reliability of the Saints, who each had a purpose and could be appealed to for aid or repentance. 

  Was that the Ghezen that Kaz knew as a child before he went to the city where they twisted him into some god of vice and cruelty? It must have been. She had to breathe past the lump forming in her throat, at the realization that Kaz’s father had knelt beside him before bedtime, taught him to clasp his hands, to bring his head to the ground and pray , the way her own father had. Inej tried to imagine what comfort Kaz would have found in the skies or the seas or a forest-swallowing fire when he woke on that barge, when he clung to his brother’s corpse just to survive. Very little, she imagined. 

   Beside her, Florian had bent again, head to the deck, and prayed aloud. It was low and quiet, in a language that resembled Kerch but wasn’t, and sounded nearer to singing than praying to her ears. Then, after a few lines, he would sit up and raise his face to the sky, before repeating the whole process. Inej closed her eyes, clasped her hands, and bent her head to the floor with him. 

   The waves crashed around them, the creaking of the masts and the sails sounded almost like the groaning of the groves of ancient trees that the Suli traveled through in the spring. A crisp wind blew across the deck, rustling her shirt and tangling the ends of her braid, and it felt like the whipping of the air across the rooftops of the Barrel where she lay on her stomach with Jesper and Kaz on a job. Florian’s low, steady singing wrapped around her heart, the way her mother’s did when she saw her again after years of captivity. Maybe it wasn’t hard to imagine this Ghezen-of-Many-Faces. After all, her Saints were with her everywhere she went, weren’t they? 

  When Florian sat up again, Inej placed a hand on one of her Saints and steeled herself. We greet the unexpected visitor. 

“Does he grant miracles, your Ghezen?” She asked him quietly. 

  At first, he seemed startled that she had broken the easy silence, that her words had shattered the holy reverence. She regretted doing so, but she hoped that his god would forgive her.

  He snorted, his expression gaining a stain of bitterness that would have looked perfectly at home on Kaz’s face. 

“He doesn’t grant anything. Never something for nothing —-that’s what my Nan used to say.” 

  Her head jerked to look at him, thrown off her balance by one of Kaz’s annoying little sayings coming out of the man’s mouth. 

  Florian shifted so he was no longer on his knees, but on his bottom with his legs spread out in front of himself, and pulled his sad, crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket. 

“He’s a force of nature, you know, you’d have better luck begging a rock or a stream for a miracle than you would Ghezen. Deals, though? That’s more his speed.” 

She snorted. “Very Kerch. And you know, I almost started respecting him for a moment.” 

Florian chuckled, lighting his cigarette. “You mustn’t hold it against him. Your saints, they remember a life lived. They all had families, hometowns, roses to smell, and dogs to play with—Ghezen, he never had to worry about age or disease or famine. Our mortality, our insignificance likely doesn’t even occur to him.” 

   He took a deep drag before blowing out perfect rings of smoke. Inej’s chin trembled with the threat of tears, though she would not admit to it even under the threat of torture, because Kaz did that. Kaz blew stupid smoke rings when he smoked his stupid cigarettes that Inej hated because the stench clung to his clothes and his hair and stunk up their bed and taxed his already damaged lungs. What a stupid thing to cry about. But love made you stupid, didn’t it? Her father asked wistfully once, staring at Mama pulling the washing from the line. 

“Would you mind coming to my quarters?” She asked. “I have something I’d like to show you.” 

   He stared at her warily, cigarette dangling from his fingers. 

“I’m not getting fired, am I? We’re in the middle of the sea, there’s nowhere for me to go, and that will just be awkward for all of us.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d just throw you overboard.” 

“Ah,” He said, and rose to his feet. 

   He followed her across the deck to her quarters and lingered by the door, eyes trained on a bookcase like he always did when she had him in her cabin. (As if seeing that she had a quilt on her bed or a glass of wine on her sideboard was the height of impropriety.) Inej crossed the room and opened her trunk to pull out one of her most prized possessions—-an exquisitely detailed miniature of Kaz inside a gold locket, painted by Marya Hendrick’s talented hand. 

   He stared at her with those tea-dark eyes, relaxed as he ever got with one of his legs stretched out on a footstool and his tie undone, slouched in one of the cushioned chairs in the parlor at the Van Eck manor where they all gathered to play games or drink together. His mouth was quirked up in a gentle but knowing smile, his pale hands folded in his lap. Her thumb absent-mindedly traced the edge of his jaw. 

  She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, and turned to face Florian, who remained rooted to his spot by the door. 

“Sit, please, Florian,” She suggested gently, gesturing to the chair in front of her desk. 

   He eyed her warily before sitting, clearly growing a little uneasy at the sudden change in atmosphere in the room. If Inej could have thought of a less uncomfortable way to have this conversation, she would have, but as it was, they were stuck with this…this mess. 

   For just a moment, she felt a flash of anger at Jordan Reitveld for not waiting to see his father buried before dragging himself and his little brother into hell. And just as quickly, she felt a great wave of shame at laying the blame for what was a series of truly unfortunate events at the feet of…of a little boy. How many times had Inej been angry at the little girl who lazed about in bed instead of tending to the horses with her father like she had been supposed to? And how many times had she forgiven her for what others had done to her? Too many to count, but still not enough. 

“How did you learn they died? Your sons?” 

He frowned, shifting uncomfortably. “I—the Alderman, managed to get the name of the man who had purchased the farm, and I went to Ketterdam to speak with him. To ask if he’d seen my sons.” 

   Her hands trembled, her jaw tensed, under the weight of her rage at the cursed blight of Pekka Rollins. How many ways could one person sin against another? When would that dreadful man stop haunting Kaz, stop haunting the Reitvelds? Perhaps, when they returned to the Wandering Isles, Inej would pay him another visit. 

“Jakob Hertzoon?” 

   He nodded. 

“And he told you they died?” 

   He breathed in sharply, turning his head to stare out the small porthole. 

“Yes. He—” He rubbed his hand over the rough fabric of his trousers. “He said they had succumbed to the Queen’s Lady’s Plague, that he and his wife had nursed them for as long as they could before the end. Said…that because of all the deaths, the crematoriums were backed up and they were thrown onto—” 

   His breath hitched, and though she couldn’t see the whole of his face, Inej could tell that he had started to cry. Her heart ached for him—for Jordan and for Kaz, and all these years they had been separated for nothing. What was gained? A few dozen acres of land, sold off as quickly as they had been signed over so a rich man could become richer. It was senseless and cruel, and Kaz would never forget the shape of this cruelty for his whole life. 

“---onto a barge and dumped in the bay. They’d only been there a month, maybe two.” He wiped at his face. 

“How old were they?” She asked him, trying to gather the strength to get through this for Kaz’s sake. For Florian’s. 

He turned to face her again, giving a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Jordan was thirteen, and Kaz was nine. Although if they had lived, Jordan would be twenty-five and Kaz—-” 

“Twenty-one,” She finished, though she had already done the math in her head. Her fingers traced the cold of the metal in her hands, nails catching on the etching on the surface. Snowdrops, a flower that Marya had assured Inej was associated, in the Kerch tradition, with the month Kaz was born in. “And you never saw their bodies? Or were shown a death certificate?” 

“No,” Florian denied. “That wasn’t unusual, during the Plague. So many died, it was impossible to keep track of them.” 

   Inej swallowed against the spit pooling in her mouth, the way it did before you were sick. She tried to say something, but no words came. She couldn’t even open her mouth. Instead, she opened the locket and leaned forward to press it into Florian’s hand. He frowned in confusion, turning it in his hands to study it. She watched as his eyes widened, face slackening almost as if he had seen the looming figure of death above him. The color left him, and his skin, already a bit pale, became almost grey as if he had been drained of all blood. His eyes met hers. 

“What is this?” He whispered, voice trembling with fear and hope. 

“That,” She started, moving to crouch next to his chair. “Is Kaz.” 

   His hand flew up to cover his mouth. Wary of her experiences with Kaz and his tumultuous stomach, she slid the wastepaper basket next to them just in case. 

“He goes by Kaz Brekker, but his real surname is Reitveld. He lives in Ketterdam, in a part of the city called the Barrel, but he wasn’t born there. He was born on a flower farm in the south of Kerch, and after his father died in a terrible accident, he and his brother Jordan left to try their luck in Ketterdam.” 

“ No,” Florian whispered, horrified. 

“They met a man who called himself Jakob Hertzoon, and who tricked them out of their inheritance and their farm and left them penniless and with nowhere to stay. They both grew ill with Firepox, and Jordan died. But Kaz—-Kaz didn’t. He didn’t die, and he lives in the Barrel and has raised himself to a man. He has…he has friends and success and love and a pair of cats that he says aren’t his even though he bought them velvet pillows to lay on at the end of his bed, and a sweater he’s been knitting for a year now but hasn’t finished because he hates weaving in the ends, and he’s had twelve birthdays since you last saw him. Four months ago, in January, he turned twenty-one. We made him stewed apples with sweet cream because he says cakes are a waste even though we’re pretty sure he likes cake, and Jesper made him wear a felt crown that Jesper’s Da made him, and we gave him a book full of puzzles because he won’t accept more than one gift, but he solved them all before the end of the night because he can’t stand to not pick something apart. Kaz—-Kaz is alive. Alive and waiting in Ketterdam.” 

   Florian stared at the painting, so tiny in his hand, as if it were a precious pearl. His thumb traced over the lines of Kaz’s cheeks tenderly, his gaze drinking in the face of a boy he once knew, now grown, not frozen forever in youth. 

“He looks just like his mother,” Florian said hoarsely. 

  And with that, he slid from his chair to his knees, as if he were a marionette whose strings had been cut, curled around the picture of his son, and wept. 

Chapter Text

   Kaz wasn’t waiting for her at the Berth, which, while unusual, was a massive relief. Florian, who had been hovering nervously around the deck the closer they got to Ketterdam, looked like he was going to burst into tears or get sick here on the pavement. She had been afraid that he would take one look at Kaz and blurt out everything, right in front of a dock full of strangers, which would’ve been the worst possible way to handle that situation. Thankfully, Kaz’s usual spot in the shade was empty, a little slip of paper tacked to a wooden crate blowing gently in the breeze. 

    They pulled to the dock and Florian looked at her expectantly, his eyes drifting to search the sea of people. She didn't have the heart to tell him his looking was pointless—no matter how well Kaz did these days, he would never be comfortable waiting in a crowd like that. 

“He’s not here. He must have a meeting or something.” 

   Florian breathed a sigh of relief, though it had a strong tinge of disappointment and heartbreak. 

“Perhaps for the best,” He muttered, stuffing his hand into his pocket.

“So, here’s the address of my friend’s house.” She handed him a slip of paper with directions to Wylan and Jesper’s. “Just tell them that you’re a member of my crew and a guest of mine and that I am asking for them to lend you a room over our break.”

He nodded. “And that's alright with them?” 

Inej smiled wryly. “It will have to be, I think. You can’t stay with the rest of the crew at the Slat for obvious reasons, and they're both kind.”

    He nodded, tucking the sheet of paper into a pocket lining the inside of his collared shirt. Smart—-you were much more likely to notice someone lifting that rather than from your jacket or trousers. Again, her reeling mind couldn’t help making connections of father to son. Kaz had all sorts of little pockets hidden away on his person; he would even keep decoy objects in his pockets for his little pickpockets to practice on. It was the boast of a lifetime to say you had lifted a thimble or pack of cards from Dirtyhands’s pockets, though only two had that distinction. (Both vicious little barrel girls, whom Kaz kept as assistants and bossed around to the ends of the earth. Inej had scolded him more than once about his treatment of them, but they honestly seemed to like the brusque but confident manner in which he communicated and puffed up their little chests in pride to tell whoever asked that they worked for Dirtyhands.)

   She had been dissecting Kaz more often than usual (which, admittedly, was already quite often) because of his father. For the weeks between the revelation and their docking in Ketterdam, in the quiet moments when all work had been handled, she and Florian would meet each other and talk of Kaz. 

   Over a plate of food or underneath the stars, they would whisper to each other about Kaz. 

   What was he like? What was his favorite color? Did he like living in Ketterdam? What does he do? What are his friends like? When did he tell Inej that he loved her? Was he a good partner—a caring one? 

   To some of his questions, due to Kaz’s closed-off nature, Inej had no answer. For example, she had no idea what his favorite color or flower would be. If he had one. She didn’t know what his early days in Ketterdam were like, only that they were hard and lonely and something he never spoke of except when detailing the unfolding of his mission to take down Pekka Rollins. But she was grateful to find that she knew more than she thought she did. He liked stamppot when it was cold; he was particularly fond of his crows and the mangy street cats that lingered around the Slat door because he fed them. His best friend was Jesper (though he wouldn’t admit it and stroke Jesper’s ego). He liked to stretch out on the couch in Wylan’s sitting room while the other man painted or played music so he could nap in a place he felt safe—-with people who made him feel safe. 

   He was a good partner, a loving one, if not a little awkward at times. He brushed her hair so gently she could hardly feel it. He would copy out whole sections from the newspaper into his letters for her because he knew that she missed the society gossip in Ketterdam. He insisted that Inej needed to wear socks to bed, lest she catch a chill and get sick, no matter how many times she told him that wasn’t how colds worked—-even going as far as to shove them onto her feet himself. He read aloud to her from his mystery novels and let her lay her head in his lap. He was kind to her parents. He grew marigolds in a box outside his window for her. He loved her gently—-so gently it had seemed beyond comprehension when compared to the ruthless Barrel boy she had met all those years ago. She could see now where that gentleness had come from. It was a particular kind of sorrow to learn that that was his nature, not the wicked cruelty he had learned in the streets of an even wickeder city. 

   Florian seemed grateful for every tidbit. He clung to the things Inej told him, writing them down in a journal he kept in his vest and returned them in kind with the things that Florian remembered or what Kaz had picked up from his Da or Jordie. 

   It made him feel real, more human than Dirtyhands ever could be, and it helped Inej’s mind bridge the gap between Kaz Brekker, confidence man, and Kaspar Rietveld, born on a flower farm. 

   Saints, did it hurt. 

    She hadn’t mentioned the gang—or the clubs he ran like the navy, or the Ice Court, or the knife he kept tucked in his boot, and the gun he kept tucked in his waistcoat. How could she? What did she say to this gentle man who had raised a gentle son that had turned wicked in his absence? Inej rarely judged Kaz for his choices anymore, not the ones he’d had to make simply to keep himself from dying or going mad from the grief that always kept him one brush of a finger away from drowning—--but she knew what he seemed like to people who didn’t know him. Inej and Jesper, and Wylan knew the Kaz with a crooked grin, the Kaz that cooed at street toms, the Kaz that would hold serious conversations with babbling babies in stores that inevitably turned their heads towards him, just as entranced by him as anyone else in the city. The Kaz with the silly laugh, the Kaz that kissed his friends sloppily on the cheek and held them close to croon happily in their ears when he was three sheets to the wind, she felt protective of him. That was the Kaz that would be hurt—-if his father didn’t understand the life he’d had to live. And wasn’t that what she was most afraid of? That Florian would see a man where he expected to see his little boy and think him a monster, like so many did? 

  How would she explain his gloves? 

  She watched him go with a pit of dread forming in her stomach. 

  Once Florian disappeared from view, she walked over to the crates in the shade and tore the piece of paper where it had been held down by a bit of sticky putty—the kind they used in museums. Figures Kaz would own something like that. 

    My Darling—- 

    Sorry to miss you, stuck under tyrannical house arrest by cats. Send immediate help, or I will begin to fear for my life. 

    She laughed, forgetting for just a moment that she was sort of dreading seeing Kaz right now. His leg was probably hurting him, but he wouldn't admit that where any enemy of his could see. Usually, however, when he was in pain and in a bad mood, it would be a simple can’t come—tied up with paperwork. Their own private code that Inej would have to come to him. On those days, she would slip into his window and gently pull him from his paperwork to lie in bed together after she rubbed ointment onto his knee and he brushed the salt from her hair. He was feeling playful today, apparently, that was a good sign. It was unfortunate that it wouldn’t last for long. 

   She took to the rooftops, making her way to the open window to Kaz’s room, where the curtain was blowing out of the window with the breeze. He was expecting her, as always. Inej poked her head into the room and had to fight down a laugh to avoid disturbing him. 

   He was on his hands and knees by the bed, head and part of his shoulders under the bed while two little cats crowded on either side of him—-looking on in concern. 

“One day I’m going to stop getting this shit for you, you’re cats! Aren’t you liquid? Fuck’s sake, I—-” He froze. Then Inej saw more than heard him sigh. “Hello, Inej.” 

“Hello,” She called out with a laugh. “Need help?” 

“No, I’ve got it,” He pulled out from under the bed, a little bell on a string between his long fingers. He shook it, and then tossed it across the room for the cats to chase. 

“Kaz!” She cried in dismay. “Your hand!” 

   Kaz had a thick cast around his right hand, the kind that braced your hand and wrist. She ran over to help him rise off the ground, and she forced him to take a seat at his desk. 

   He rolled his eyes, sticking a ruler into the space between his cast and wrist to scratch at his skin. 

“It’s fine. I only have to wear it for a few more days, apparently. Unrelated—-I’m not speaking to Wylan right now.” 

   She huffed in irritation, walking over to him to run her hands over his shoulders and arms and the curve of his head and slope of his neck—-just to make sure nothing else was broken. 

“All present and correct?” He asked drolly. 

“You can’t be angry with Wylan for making you see a medick, Kaz.” She scolded him. “That's the arm you use for your cane!” 

“It’s the principle of the thing,” He answered her.

    One of the cats ran past, and Inej managed to dart out and catch her. 

“Your Papa is being crazy,” Inej muttered in a silly voice, cradling the little calico like a baby in her arms to go sit on her windowsill. 

“That cat is not my child, I don’t accept her,” Kaz protested, pointing at Inej in mock outrage before turning to his desk and bending over his ledger. 

“She doesn’t look anything like me,” He muttered, pointedly ignoring the black cat clambering up his chair to curl up around his neck. 

“You can’t seriously just call them cat,” Inej scolded, not for the first time. “A thing needs a name.” 

“No, a thing needs food, water, and shelter—which I provide. A name is a luxury.” 

  She rolled her eyes at him, but when she sat the cat in her arms wiggled free and ran to his desk to scream up at him. He turned to look at her. 

“Hush! Before I throw you back into the gutter.” 

   Meooooow! She yelled. Which Inej could only imagine meant, feed me, you bastard! 

“Yes, well, you’re a lot of trouble.” 

   She stood on her back legs, paws stretching up. Inej laughed. 

“Aw, she wants you to pick her up, Kaz!” 

“Well, too bad.” 

“Kaz, don’t be mean! You won’t even give them names.” 

   He sighed, bending over to scoop her up and hold her like a baby just the way Inej had. 

“They have names,” Kaz said. “That one is Mormel and the other is Doosje.” 

   Inej scoffed, walking to perch on the desk next to him. 

“You cannot name your cats mutt and little boxhead.” 

He shrugged. “That’s the names their parents gave them, it would be too confusing for the little dears to change it now.” 

   She rolled her eyes, but curled a hand around his forearm, just to touch him after all their time apart. After a few minutes of silence where she fought viciously to find her courage, she nudged him up to sit in his chair, looking up at him instead. It would be better if he didn’t feel small and trapped for this conversation. 

“Do you ever think about being a father?” 

He frowned. “No. Not particularly.” 

“I think you’d be good at it.” 

To this, he snorted. “You have a rosy view of me, wraith.” 

“You’d raise a vicious gaggle of girls, I think.” 

He huffed a laugh. “Someone to replace me. One girl to run each club, and then one to run the Dregs and one to chase slavers across the sea. Is that it?”

   She grinned, though she could admit that something warm and liquid settled in her belly at the thought of it. Inej could almost see it—-Kaz sitting at his desk, a child sitting at his feet playing, and another sleeping in a drawer like they often did in Kerch. But that was silly, they were too young for children. And anyway, that wasn’t the point of this conversation. 

“Well, one should probably run for office. Just so we have a spoon in every pot.” 

   He barked out a laugh, head tipping back to expose the long column of his pale throat, chin darkened with a bit of stubble that he militantly shaved away because he thought beards looked messy. 

   She tugged him closer by his belt loops to stand between her spread legs. Inej ran soothing hands up and down the lower part of his thighs. He stared down at her softly with his dark eyes, hand braced on her shoulder to keep his balance. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said. 

    A sweet light hit his eyes, soft and syrupy, eyes turning almost honey in the afternoon sun. 

“No,” he agreed softly, twirling a loose piece of her hair around one of his clever fingers. “Just—” 

“Not now.” 

“Not now.” He smiled at her, the little shy one that she seldom ever saw where he looked at her from under a fan of unfairly thick black lashes. (Girls would kill to have eyelashes like Kaz Brekker—or so Nina had told him once over breakfast. He had not been impressed.) 

   How would that shy little smile look on a round-faced, dark-eyed child? Would they have that smile? Would they have Inej’s laugh or Kaz’s sharp cheeks? Maybe they wouldn’t look that much like either of them. Maybe it would be like her cousin’s baby, who had looked so much like Inej’s grandfather that everyone had joked it was him come back to haunt them all. Would they have Papa’s nose? Or the sweet curve of her Mama’s mouth? Maybe they would have the soft, dark curls that Kaz had apparently taken from his mother. 

   Would they have Florian’s dimples?

   She needed to tell him. 

“I—-what were your parents like, I mean? You’ve never said.” 

    He looked surprised, but not offended, the way he was when his friend’s questions about his past had touched a nerve. He stared off, just a ways over her shoulder. 

“Well…” He started and then stopped. She waited for him patiently, letting him linger in the silence of his uncertainty. That was one of her favorite things about Kaz—-that they could just exist in the silence together without performing. 

   She tugged at him more, gently pulling at him until he sat perched on her leg. He huffed a laugh, curling an arm around her shoulders. Her hand splayed across the smooth silk of his waistcoat, a sunny burnt orange color that Kaz had ordered made from the bundles of silk Inej’s mother sent him.

    Inej had tried to discourage the woman from sending them to him, telling her that Kaz had no use for them, but the next time her parents had come to visit, Kaz had waited for them in a dark waistcoat and a suit made from the bolts of shining midnight blue her mother had spent ages picking. Her mother had beamed with happiness, bolting for the boy and pinching his cheeks and cooing over how handsome her boy was. Kaz had taken it gracefully, with a wide grin and flushed face, and Inej had fallen even more madly in love with him. Since then, Inej’s mother sent him little bits of things, and Kaz had luxurious, well-tailored clothes made from them—the real silks of her people, given freely and worn with respect. A far cry from the fake silks of the menagerie and a reminder to those in Ketterdam that Kaz was hers. 

“My mother died giving birth to me, so I didn’t know her.” He said it so matter-of-factly, with none of the sorrow Florian had when talking about her, or even the way Jesper spoke of his own mother. 

   It made sense, though, that Kaz felt very little about it. She died giving birth to him—-really, he had never even met the woman. It was sad, but not surprising, that they were strangers. 

“And your father?” She prompted. 

    The corners of his mouth turned down, the way they did when he wasn’t quite sure if he was going to cry or get angry. Eventually, it seemed, he decided on neither. 

“Gentle. He was gentle. People used to…” His voice disappeared into a noiseless whisper, staring across the room blankly. 

   She waited for him. 

“People used to bring puppies or kittens or whatever and drop them at the top of the road because they knew he would take care of them—he never knew a lost cause. He…..used to play the fiddle at night so I would sleep. Couldn’t sleep for days after he died. I….I’m glad he’s dead.” 

    It was like the breath had been knocked out of her—a pricking at her fingers and eyes that spoke trouble. The feeling of just missing the bar when you were swinging forward and going hurtling towards the net. 

“You don’t mean that.” She whispered. 

“He’d weep to know what I’d turned into.” He said softly, voice rough, and when he pulled away to stand, she let him go easily. 

    He crossed the room to his washstand and tugged off his remaining glove, reaching for water to splash on his face, scrubbing at his skin like he could remove it and find a better Kaz waiting underneath. Inej let him go for just a few moments before grabbing him gently by the elbow. He turned, eyes wide and scared, and she knew that she had missed the perfect moment to tell him by about thirty minutes. Saints, she wasn’t doing this well at all. 

   His hands shook, and she led him to his bed and encouraged him to lie down. He hid his face in his hands, letting Inej gently remove his boots and tuck a blanket around his legs. 

“I have something to tell you,” She said. 

  He laughed bitterly. 

“I don’t know if this is the best time for me, ‘Nej.” His words muffled by his hands, he curled into himself, knees pulling up towards his chest. 

“I know. And I am sorry, but it is very important.” 

“I hadn’t thought about him in years, did you know?” He moved his hands and looked at her, something aching in his dark eyes. “Isn’t that dreadful?” 

“Everyone grieves differently, Kaz, you know that.” 

   He shook his head, brow furrowing in anger. 

“My life before Ketterdam sometimes feels like some sort of sweet, terrible, strange dream. Da seemed like someone from a fairy story, someone too good and kind to exist in a world so cruel. Like….like butterflies or lambs or something.” 

“I know. You know I know that feeling better than anyone,” She answered him. They had both been ruined and built up stronger in Ketterdam, so removed from the innocent, naive little creatures they had been. 

“I know,” He echoed quietly. 

   She could see the moment he steeled himself, the sadness leaving his eyes. 

“Alright.” 

She nodded. “I—-I picked up a new crew member during my travels.” 

He frowned. “So? It’s your crew, do whatever you like. You don’t need my permission.” 

“I know. It’s just…..this crew member knew…you.” 

“What,  I had wronged them in some sort of way? I can handle my own affairs, Inej.” 

“I know that!” She snapped, a flare of irritation at his sharp tone. She took a deep breath. “No, it wasn’t someone who knew you from Ketterdam. They knew you from before.” 

Something uneasy entered his face. “Someone who ....recognized me? Someone who would say something?” 

“No. No, it was…Kaz, it was your father.” 

He reeled back, blinking at her with incomprehension. “Inej, my father is dead. Someone is pretending to be my father? What did he say? What is he claiming—-is it for money?” 

“No. I—” She sighed, pulled Florian’s locket from her pocket, and handed it to him. 

    His dark brow furrowed, a pale finger tracing the metal and the etching there until his face slackened in surprise. He’d recognized it, then. Florian had told her he would---he had always been running his little fingers over it, I told him it’d be his one day. Kaz opened it with a click, and if he had looked surprised before, he looked shaken to his core now. The blood left his face, making him look like a corpse. He dropped the locket, as if it were molten hot. 

“What the fuck, Inej?” He demanded, breathless. She could see his chest hitching, trying desperately to catch up with the frantic breaths he was taking or the pounding of his heart. It was the same sort of way he did all those years ago in that crowded prison wagon. Not a good sign. 

  She reached out to place a hand on his knee, and he flinched away to press himself into the corner. A worse sign. 

“It’s some sort of trick. A—a fucking tailor or something. They talked to someone from t–the village and—” 

“He said his name is Florian, that he had two sons, Jordan and Kaspar, who was named after his wife Kaspara, who had died giving birth to him.” 

   Kaz clapped a hand over his mouth, screwing his eyes shut. Inej reached down to grab the wastepaper basket and place it in his arm. He curled around it in a way that meant that the burning bile was already making its way up his throat. Inej and Kaz had become so familiar with each other’s lowest moments that there was no embarrassment in it anymore. Inej needed music and talking and distance—--Kaz needed somewhere to lose his lunch, though Inej lamented his sore throat and stomach he always got afterwards. She wished she didn’t have to upset him or trigger him like this, but it would be worse to not tell him. 

“He said that when you were born, you were so little that he kept you next to the kettle to keep you warm. He said that you left school at seven to watch over the sheep, that they would follow you from pasture to pasture and you would sing to them. He said….he said that he used to paint flowers on the soles of your shoes for good luck.” 

   Kaz lurched forward and gagged, a violent, painful sound. She wanted to hug him or rub his back or comb her fingers through his hair, but that would only make it worse. When he was finished, he looked up, nose red, eyes desperate and wild and tears wetting his cheeks. 

“How?” He asked, his voice so rough it was nearly impossible to understand. 

“You can ask him, if you want? He’s at Jesper and Wylan’s. Unless, if you want to wait—” 

“I suppose I must,” He cut her off firmly. 

   She watched, helpless, as he pulled his armor back on, piece by piece and stepped into his boots. His shoulders stiffened, and his demeanor grew colder.  Inej wasn’t angry with him for it, so she bent to tie his laces and followed behind him as he left his room, cane tucked under his arm in deference to his broken hand, and as he walked out into the darkened streets with his hat pulled down low. Dirtyhands, off to tie up his loose ends. Inej could only hope that it would end without blood. 

Chapter Text

   Ketterdam was a miserable place, with dank, dirty streets that smelled of brackish water and piss, with criminals on every corner. 

   That’s what Florian’s Muoike told him as a child, but his hard-edged aunt was prone to cynicism and a kind of sharp nastiness that seemed to run in their whole damned family. So he had never really believed her until the first time her ship, The Golden Tulip , had docked there. Florian, then an insufferable fifteen-year-old who considered himself worldly and wise, had been divested of his wallet in under ten minutes. By midday, he found himself missing his shoes and floating in a rank canal behind a casino while his muoike cackled at the sight of him. The next dozen or so times Florian found himself in that cursed city had been better—-but only just. 

   Ketterdam was worse than miserable the last time he had stepped off a boat into its bustling harbor. 

   It was after the plague.

   He had been waiting in line for the ferry to Ketterdam, and as such, was one of the first people let into the city after the lockdown had been lifted, but before the country had opened up again. Without the expectation of tourists, the city officials had still been hiding away in their countryside manors, and clean-up efforts were half-hearted at best. 

   There had been bodies everywhere. 

   Piled up on the corners of the streets, tossed into large refuse piles, and swarmed by thousands of flies, so thick that when they moved to another body, one could have sworn it was a dark cloud passing them by. The workers on the ferry disembarked to lower the gangplank and had to pool their combined strength to push stray bodies, already stripped of their clothes and valuables, into the roaring canal below. The locals, rough-hewn and dead-eyed survivors of the Barrel, kept their eyes trained to the streets to try to recognize someone, anyone, in the rotting piles. 

   Florian had been around plenty of dead bodies in his day, but you never got used to the sickly-sweet rot that coated your nose and didn’t leave for days afterwards. He had carefully made his way through slain sailors rotting out in the sun enough times that it had stopped bothering him. The stench when he stepped onto the cobblestone streets almost made him vomit. The woman behind him let out a terrified scream and fainted, her body smacking the deck hard, and the porters scrambled to help her. 

   Florian didn’t help. He was too busy searching the bodies, just like the locals were. That mound of flesh being torn apart by dogs—-was that one of his boys? A grey, bloated corpse with red hair, completely disfigured by sores—-was that the boy who had only just started to grow tall and strong like a man? A tiny little form, carefully covered with someone’s coat, was that the tiny boy who could fit into the palm of his hands when he was born? 

   He took the paper with the forwarding address Jordie had left with their neighbor and followed it to a boarding house in the commercial district. The landlord had died early on in the plague, but his daughter dug up his log books to tell Florian that Jordan Reitveld and one child (and wasn’t it cruel that thirteen was considered a man?) had been evicted for non-payment only two weeks before. It hadn’t helped. He asked around, desperately trying to gain the sympathy of any of the stone-faced surviving residents, if anyone could remember two brothers with country accents. He was met with cursing or coldness— pitying looks, or apologies, and instructions to a place called the Emerald Palace. And a man named Jakob Hertzoon. 

   And Hertzoon had told him only of sorrow.

   That Jordie and Kaz had fallen sick. That he and his wife had tried their best, but there was nothing anyone could do for the plague. That they had died together, and that Hertzoon had paid for them to be cremated so they could be put to rest, their ashes scattered along the beautiful garden hedge-row—the closest thing to the farm they had grown up on in a city of stone and cement. It had been a relief, a kindness, that they had at least been put to rest together. 

   Florian had searched the city for weeks afterward, unable to accept the truth, before he fell into his cups and drank himself stupid for months. He had finally been spotted by a sailor who had traveled with his aunt, and she had come to collect him.

   Done playing house? She’d asked, standing above him as he lay sprawled in a puddle of his vomit.

   He knew her well enough to see the sorrow in her own heart. She had loved those boys, but Sietske had never known love the way Florian had with Kaspara, and the Reitvelds raised their children on bitterness and cruelty. He had tried his best to raise his sons differently—-to shower them in love and pride and tenderness. A sharp-tongued Reitveld was the best-case scenario. And the worst….well, there was a reason Sietske and Florian were the only Reitvelds left. 

   Well. Florian and Sietske….and Kaz. 

   His heart somersaulted sickeningly at the thought of it. 

   Though he had never quite healed from it, some part of him had settled into a world where his boys were gone. He had carefully tucked their memory deep into his heart next to their mother and guarded them like a secret for years, taking it out and brushing off the dust when he was alone. But—-Kaz wasn’t a memory anymore, was he? He tried to imagine what he would look like; he had seen a picture, but his mind couldn’t make sense of the sharp-edged man in Captain Ghafa’s locket being the same little boy who would so carefully guide lost lambs back to their flock. For years, Kaz had been little and quiet and sweet and dead in his mind—-frozen forever in the sweetness of boyhood, still a bit of baby fat on his cheeks. 

   Now, what would he be like? Twenty-one in the Barrel, that was a man, not a boy. And what sort of man was he? You couldn’t see a man’s soul in a painting, no matter how finely done. Was he tall, strong, and patient? Did he honor his deals the way he should? He was an employer—-did he run his company well under Ghezen’s laws? Was he kind to his workers the way a father would be—the way Ghezen guided all his children? Did his good outweigh his wickedness? 

  Florian was no idiot; he knew that his son was a criminal. 

   Inej had been very careful about what she shared with him about Kaz, but what she didn’t realize was that Florian knew more about the seedy underside of his home country than she thought a simple farmer would. Kaz was a businessman. Kaz owned two clubs, another opening in the spring. Kaz employed hundreds. Kaz lived in the Barrel.

   The Barrel didn’t breed law-abiding men, and law-abiding men certainly didn’t own properties as lucrative as clubs or bars if they weren’t involved with the gangs. The Barrel had raised Kaz, more than Florian had the chance to, and Ketterdam was a cruel, unfeeling mother. 

   And you didn’t get a club, more than one club, if you weren’t the leader of a gang. 

   So—-his son was a Barrel Boss. If he had faithful followers like Inej, who had long been freed from her obligations to the gang (yes, he had figured that out as well), and the kind of money to find a lost girl’s parents an ocean away and a warship as a courting gift, then Kaz was a very important Barrel Boss. 

   He had put those pieces together fairly quickly, but he spent the weeks traveling to Ketterdam turning it over in his head. His son was a gangster—-could he live with that? If Kaz wasn’t the sweet little boy who cried when it was his turn to answer questions in class because he hated to be looked at, could Florian still love him the same? If he was cruel and conniving and wicked, could Florian still be proud to be his father? 

   His heart hadn’t wavered. 

   He learned, even more quickly, that the answer was a resounding yes. Florian ached for his little boy, for the child that had just barely survived his own birth, tragic as it was, and that he had raised alone. The little sweet bird that Florian had rested near the kettle in the hopes he wouldn’t die in the night, that was Kaz, no matter what he was now.

   Florian could love a monster if it only answered to Kaz. 

   Monsters needed love more than saints, he knew that to be true; that was all he could think as he left the Barrel, crossed the financial district, and finally stopped in front of a stately manor house along the garden-lined cobble streets. Florian leaned back, taking in the decorative cornices, the shutters made from solid oak, the delicate blue paint so popular with men who could afford the pounds of ground precious gems that could produce that color. Tulips of all kinds lined the smooth granite walkway, even those rarer varieties of striped tulips whose bulbs sold for hundreds. He let out a low whistle. The sweet sound of piano music floated from an open window somewhere on the second floor. 

   Kaz had some wealthy friends, apparently. 

   Florian steeled himself, hoisting his bag higher on his back and used the shining copper knocker to rap sharply at the door a few times. From inside the house, he could hear the music stop, followed by a crash, and then cursing in Zemeni. Then—-

“ Jesper! You’re going to break it!” 

   Followed by what Florian could swear was the sound of someone falling down the stairs. The door opened, and a tall, handsome Zemeni boy around Kaz’s age smiled at him, panting like he had run a mile. 

“Sorry, Mr. Hendriks is very busy right now, not taking any calls—-” 

   He’d started to close the door, but Florian stuck his foot out to stop it. 

“Apologies, Captain Ghafa sent me?” 

   The boy looked surprised, but took the note the captain had given him and read it quickly. His face smoothed out, any tension in his shoulders easing. 

“Oh! Well, come on in then! A friend of Inej’s is a friend of ours, I suppose.” 

    Florian nodded his thanks, stepping into a lavish entry hall, the boy closing the door behind them. He let the boy take his coat and hang it up, though Florian’s practical wool duster looked threadbare, dated, and poor next to the fine black wool of a mercher and various coats made from colorful silks. He turned and saw real gilding lining the edges of the buffet table under the mirror and fought the urge to check his shoes for dog shit. Kaz had very wealthy friends, apparently. 

“We were just about to have dinner, actually, so your timing is immaculate. I’m Jesper, and that vision at the top of the stairs is Wylan.” 

   Florian turned, just as a pale, red-headed Kerch boy was making his way down the stairs—rolling his eyes at Jesper. He smiled absently at Florian, the way you might if you met a stranger and wanted to be polite, but not necessarily invite more communication. 

“I’m Florian Reitveld, I—I’m on the crew of the Wraith.” 

   Jesper’s cheeks grew tight, his smile turning just a little wooden as he exchanged a furtive glance with Wylan. 

“ Reitveld , you say? Interesting name, is that a very common Kerch name?” Jesper asked, shutting the door behind them and leading him into a formal dining room. 

   Florian sat awkwardly, cognizant of the dampness of bay water soaking his pant leg cuffs and the soot on his ass where he had taken a rest by the side of the road earlier. The chairs had silk cushions. Who had silk cushions in their dining rooms? 

   A woman in a smart uniform and a bleached apron came out and began filling their dishes with generous fillings of some sort of spiced stew.  Wylan thanked the woman and busied himself with his napkin, while Jesper stared at him unabashedly, something hard in his eyes. He smiled widely, the expression not quite reaching his eyes. 

“Only, I think I’ve heard it before.” 

  Florian cleared his throat. 

“Possibly. It used to be common, but there aren’t very many of us left.” 

   Wylan, whose large, brown eyes had an arresting intelligence to them, finally decided to join the conversation. 

“It’s southern, isn’t it? For reed-grower. ” 

   That was certainly a loaded question, considering the way most City Kerch considered southern Kerch to be a lesser and uncivilized group who were still affected by the “undesirable” qualities of their very distant Shu ancestors. But, strangely, that didn’t seem to be the reason Wylan was asking. 

“Yes. My family grew reeds for generations before me.” 

Jesper snorted. “For what? Do you lot eat them or something? Listen, I know you like sort of bland, unappetizing food, but surely you don’t eat reeds.” 

“Hey! Our food isn’t bland or unappetizing.” Wylan protested. 

   No…Jesper was right on that front. 

“No, it’s for roofing. It’s a good, renewable way to make thatching for the old country houses. My family had a stronghold over that industry for centuries, made us a nice bit of profit. Of course, by the time I inherited our little plot of land, pretty much everyone had switched to shingles like you City folk. We also grew tulips and lavender, along with sheep, so we weren’t completely out of luck, but reeds are not money makers anymore.” 

“Well, at least you have that bit from your gran and stuff,” Jesper said. 

Florian snorted. “No, that money is all pissed away in alcohol or betting. And these days the farm belongs to some businessman in Ketterdam, apparently.”

   He said that last bit casually, hoping not to be too obviously leading them into the answers he wanted. The boys, a little too obviously for a pair of experienced criminals (he had seen the tattoos on their arms that they didn’t bother covering up), looked at each other in pure alarm before looking at Florian again. (If they were friends of Inej, then surely they must be friends with Kaz. Inej had mentioned them in the stories she told him of Kaz—-Jesper, Kaz’s best friend, who was handsome and funny. Wylan, whom Kaz would read to or lie in his company while the other boy played piano. He wanted to shake them, to ask them anything about Kaz—-what songs he liked to listen to, had he been eating enough, anything. Florian would take anything.) 

   Jesper let out a pained groan behind his teeth, followed by the slight rattling of silverware, clearly a reaction to being kicked before he could say anything damning. 

“So…is Inej moving on? Or were the rooms with the rest of the crew full?” Wylan asked. “Or…is there something she needs our help with? Is she alright?” 

“Yes, she’s fine,” He rushed to reassure them. “She—-well, it may be best to wait for her to explain things. Really, it’s a favor for me—-” 

   The door slammed open, making the three men at the table jump. The maid, who had been silently standing in a way that made her melt into the wallpaper the way all well-trained servants seemed to do as second nature, rolled her eyes. She set the carafe down and hurried into the hall, calling out anxiously to whoever was there. 

“Mr. Brekker, please just use the doorbell!” 

  Florian stilled, ice creeping into his blood and hands starting to shake like he hadn’t eaten in days. A deep, rumbling voice answered the woman, though Florian couldn’t make out what he was saying. Was that him? 

   Inej’s voice added something, but Florian was still straining to hear the male voice again as if it would disappear into nothing if Florian listened to anything else. 

“He has a key,” Wyan complained behind him. 

   Silent as a mouse, Captain Ghafa floated into the room, shooting Florian an apologetic glance before allowing herself to be wrapped in a bone-crushing embrace by Jesper. The friends exchanged words, laughing and chattering away as Florian’s eyes were fixed to the darkened doorway—swallowing around what felt like a solid stone lodged in his throat. He jumped as a hand gently rested on his shoulder. Florian turned to see Inej, who gave him a tight smile, before leaning down to whisper to him. 

“Don’t take anything too personally. He—-this is going to be hard on him, I think.” 

   Fuck, it was going to be hard on him.

   The sound of something striking the hardwood drew his attention back to the empty doorway—-the rhythm of an uneven gait, followed by the strike of metal on wooden floors. A cane? It must be. 

   It was a torturous thirteen steps—-thirteen agonizing steps until a figure stepped out of the darkened hallway into the warm light of the dining room. The electric lights bounced off the bright silver flash of the crow's head and the silver tip of an elegant walking cane. Why did he need a cane? Inej hadn’t mentioned it. Was it recent? 

   Heart pounding like a drum in his ears, he let his gaze turn from the cane to the hand attached to it—-the body attached to it. 

    A pair of hands covered in thick leather gloves, long legs, and trim waist, and strong shoulders wrapped in somber mercher black. His boots were sturdy and sensible, a dull black leather, and a black hat clutched in his free hand, not holding the cane. A bit of color flashed from under his suit jacket, probably his waistcoat, and he had a pocket watch on a short chain—-harder to steal that way. The whole picture screamed wealth, wealth, and danger, and a disdain for the flash and opulence of merchers and Barrel rats alike. Strangely, it reminded Florian of his minister grandfather, who had worn the same suit until he’d been buried in it, and when he died the whole family had decided to abandon his kindness and charity. He had refused to wear anything else while there were still people in Kerch dying of starvation or illness, and it was noted in a place like Kerch, whose culture was so tied to the material, things as seemingly inconsequential as where you purchased your socks said volumes about what you believed. Florian didn’t have enough information yet to determine what all this meant about Kaz. 

Kaz. 

   He was pale, but Florian could still see the ghost of his childhood freckles scattered across his cheeks and his upturned nose. And he wasn’t tall, not compared to Florian or even Jesper, but taller than Inej. Florian’s eyes searched his face—-the high, fine bones of his cheeks, the sharp cut of his jaw, the full lips chapped from the wind, and the dark eyebrows that framed his whole expression. That was Kaspara’s face, he thought, a little hysterically, probably. That was her frown of displeasure that made the usually upturned, mischievous quirk of a smile that much sharper and disapproving. That was the tightness in her sharp jaw that always showed its face when she was about to fight some nosy biddy in church despite Florian’s pleading to leave it. That was Kaspara’s cheeks, her noble-looking brow, her thick black hair, and her serious expression. And, more than anything, those were her eyes. 

   Her—- his eyes were dark, sharp bits of obsidian set far back in a serious face that drilled right through you. There was a kind of electricity in a set of eyes like that, a weariness and danger that you saw in hunting dogs. Ugly Shu eyes, City Kerch had often said derisively, (no matter that people from Shu Han largely had golden eyes that had long since disappeared in their Kerch cousins after generations of intermarrying) because they could not appreciate the beauty of freshly tilled earth, or the dark waters of the sea. They were wonderful eyes, Florian had always thought so—-big and brown and clever. Florian and his neighbors had always joked that those eyes were the eyes of someone who had lived life before and was annoyed at having to do the whole thing over again. Our little old man, Florian, had teased him once. Kaz had frowned and turned his back to his father in a move that reminded Florian of an offended cat. 

  Kazzie-cat, Florian used to call him. 

  They stared at each other for a few moments, the room falling into an awkward silence. Inej stepped forward, inching carefully closer to Kaz. 

“Hello, Kaspar,” Florian said, the words tumbling out of his mouth like he had no control over them whatsoever. 

   Kaz’s eyes widened, nearly bulging in an expression that Florian could only call horror. His face, already pale, lost all its pink and healthy flush. The blood drained from him, skin a pallid gray with a sickly green tinge, and his hand flew up to cover his mouth, his hat dropping to the floor. He swayed. 

“Oh, shit!” Jesper cursed, hurrying forward to grab Kaz by the underarms, rushing him over to sit in one of the dining room chairs. “Wylan, grab—-a wastepaper basket, or, uh—” 

   Wylan dumped out a serving bowl, holding it out to Jesper, who shoved it into Kaz’s arms. The other man hunched over it like he was going to vomit. Jesper’s hands hovered over Kaz’s shoulders and back, gently resting one on him and waiting as if to gauge his reaction. Kaz screwed his eyes shut, and this seemed to be some sort of signal that Jesper could rub his hand across his friend’s back. Inej bent down next to him, murmuring something at Kaz, though Florian wasn’t sure if he was listening. 

   A glass of water slammed down in front of him, making Florian jump. Wylan stood over him, a stern, suspicious look on his face. 

“Is he going to be alright?” Florian asked, voice trembling. 

“Who the fuck are you?” Wylan snapped.

Chapter Text

“So—you two…..know each other?” Jesper asked awkwardly, his hand still making firm circles across Kaz’s back. “Because, I mean, it seems like you know each other. Like….not in a good way?”

   Jesper bent down, his breath warm fanning over the side of Kaz’s face. He must have been chewing on jurda leaves because his breath carried their earthy, minty smell.

“Do you know him?” He whispered.

    Did Kaz know him? That was a more complicated question than Kaz could answer. If Jesper had asked him, before Kaz had walked through that door, the answer would have been no. No, Kaz didn’t know him, because despite what Inej said, Kaz’s father was dead. Dead—-still, not moving, not breathing, light left his eyes, worm food. 

    Kaz had seen it happen, seen Hiske spot a snake and rear back, heard his father call out in alarm and stumble as she bolted, saw him fall— 

    Saints, there was blood. There was the sickening crunch of bones and ripping of skin, of a bloodcurdling scream of agony before a terrible stillness. His father’s blood had been hot against his face, solid bits of what Kaz later realized was bone and bits of muscle and sinew had landed on him. That night, tucked away in a horrible, uncertain limbo at a neighbor’s, Jordie had carefully combed the bone and flesh and blood that had congealed and tangled in Kaz’s hair with tears streaming down his face. Kaz hadn’t cried. How could he? He hadn’t understood what was happening; all he knew was that his father was there one moment, waiting on the cucumber sandwich Kaz had in his hands, and the next he was torn to pieces. 

    He had seen it for weeks when he closed his eyes at night, dark red pooling in the dry ruts of dirt that had not yet been turned. For years, it was the only thing Kaz could see when he thought of his father, until he had trained himself not to think of his father at all. It wasn’t like Jordie, who Kaz had seen and touched and clung to as he decayed—-Kaz hadn’t seen his father buried. He hadn’t seen him nailed into a box and lowered into the ground. He had been strong and tall and achingly kind, then he had been….mush. Then he had been nothing. Not even a ghost, like Jordie was, maybe just…a wisp of smoke or a ray of sunshine that the roll of dark clouds had overtaken. 

   He would have said that his father was more than dead. Until he’d rounded the fucking corner. Maybe he could have written it off as the cruel work of some enemy using a tailor, trying to make Kaz Brekker feel something, or some misunderstanding by Inej, if he hadn’t looked different. If it had been Da, strong and tall and smiling widely like he was waiting for Kaz to come in from the pasture, Kaz could have written it off. 

   There were traces of Da in the man sitting at Wylan’s table, hunched over, nervous, graying, and worn by the sun—-his nose, his eyes, his frame. He looked different, but still his Da underneath it all. Like his Da, if his guts hadn’t been spilled on dry soil thirteen years ago. 

    Kaz felt dizzy. Fuck, he felt worse than dizzy. The ground was rushing at him, he felt like he was wobbling out at sea, buffeted by waves. Strangely, there was no hint of the harbor, no hint of rotting, bloated flesh, though his stomach was turning like it did when he caught the long-remembered whiff of sweet rot. 

     His ears were ringing like he’d been boxed around the ears. He took a chance to look up at the man again, and met green eyes—Jordie’s eyes—and felt saliva pool in his mouth. Kaz looked down again, tearing his gaze from the other man, and curled around the bowl on his lap. The ringing became so loud he couldn’t hear whatever comforting thing Inej was murmuring to him. Once all this was over, Kaz was going to have to touch base with her and let her know that she had not, remotely, prepared him for this. 

    Jesper’s hand was burning hot through the layers of Kaz’s clothes, the way his hands always did when he was nervous. Kaz had made the connection only after he had grown comfortable enough to accept Jesper’s friendly touches, and he assumed it was his nerves aching to be used to twist metal, or change the colors of Wylan’s shirt buttons, or guide his bullets to land home in someone’s head——to have another go at the makker’s wheel. Kaz had the faraway urge to hand him a pack of cards to fiddle with, but a closer, more selfish part of him thought he needed him to stay by his side. Always Kaz’s second, even now. 

“Because if you do, and he did something awful, I can just shoot him right now. Seriously, got a gun right—-” 

“Jesper?” Wylan interrupted.

“Yes, love?” 

“Shut it.” 

“Gooood idea. Yep, great one. I’ll just….” He curled over the top of Kaz, where he was sitting, and pressed his mouth to his hair, as if he needed to crush his mouth into something to physically stop himself from rambling. 

“I asked who the hell you are, didn’t I?” Wylan repeated himself coldly. 

“Well, I—” Da croaked. “I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to tell.” 

    Kaz’s eyes burned hot, almost like he was going to cry, which was absurd. He had come here set on convincing himself that whoever Inej had met wasn’t his Da. But….fuck, that sounded like Da. It was the rolling, rounded, sing-songy accent of the south, the kind he and Jordie had when they came into this damned city like two pigeons ripe for the plucking. It was his deep voice, and Kaz could remember the way it rumbled like thunder in his chest when he carried Kaz in his arms. 

“Wylan,” Inej started, just a hint of a scold in her tone. 

“No!” Wylan snapped. “I want to know who you’ve sent to my door, and why the fuck he has Kaz, of all people, spooked. And why the fuck does he have the name we used to frame my father—preferably, I would like all those answers at once.” 

   He could feel the weight of Inej’s gaze on him for just a moment, the way he always could, before she spoke again. 

“That’s personal.” 

“Personal?” 

“Yes. Between Kaz—-” 

“Well, it seems to me that Kaz isn’t a place to give me answers right now, and frankly, you seem like the only person in the room that knows what the hell is happening, so excuse me if I give less of a shit than usual about Kaz’s privacy.” 

“I vouched for him!” Inej snapped back, finally, all full of righteous indignation. She was especially beautiful when she was morally outraged—-Kaz wished his stomach was steady enough that he could look up and see her. “It’s not like I’ve brought a criminal to your door!” 

“You’re a pirate!” 

“Well, only in the strictest sense of the word,” Jesper offered helpfully. 

“Shut it, Jesper!” Inej and Wylan snapped at the same time. 

“Oi, why are you ganging up on me?” 

     Kaz lifted his eyes hesitantly to the man sitting awkwardly at the grand wooden table. He looked miserably out of place, as out of place as Kaz felt whenever he crossed the threshold here. He had on sturdy, worn clothes that been mended well and often in a way that was simple and economical. Jesper, too, often mended his clothes, but would cover the flaw with frilly lace ruffles or complicated embroidery. This was simple Kerch utility. His boots were clean, though worn like the rest of him, and the hems of his trousers damp. One of his arms was missing—-the arm that had dragged him into the machine, and Kaz could remember one of his finger bones going flying in a way that would have been comedic if it wasn’t horrific. He’d grown his beard out a bit, not excessively, but longer than the close trim Kaz was used to. His hair, orange as sweet clementines, was peppered with gray. And, more than anything, there was a kind of defeated grief that hung around him like a storm cloud. It was the kind of pigeon Kaz hated to see in the club, because they would blow their money at the tables, and then never come back to lose another day because they got into a fight or shot their brains out before Kaz could ever see another kruge coin from them—-no matter what debts they owed him. His bruisers would take one look at this man and toss him out on his ass. His Da had been a level-headed, peaceful fellow, but late at night sometimes, or when he was looking at Kaz when he thought the boy wasn’t looking, he would look like that. 

He’s aching for Ma, Jordie would say sagely, somber for his years. 

Why? Kaz asked him stupidly. 

Because they were soulmates, He’d said, scooping another bunch of hay with his pitchfork while Kaz turned his toy over and over in his hands. 

It means they loved each other so much that it ached. The way I love you, I guess. 

   Kaz could understand that, he thought, but he understood it more now—-after over a decade of missing them both. 

Do you ache for Ma? Kaz asked him. 

Not when I have you, Jordie had said, smiling at him. You’re just like her. 

   The older boy had paused thoughtfully, a rare occasion for the boy who had often lept before he looked, and broken many bones in the process. 

Maybe that’s why he looks at you like that. I don’t know. 

   Kaz had spent thirteen years being haunted by Jordie. He couldn’t imagine having to live with his twin, one who had killed him. A lesser man would have made Kaz’s murder of his mother into a reason to be cruel. But Florian wasn’t like Pekka Rollins or Jan Van Eck, or Kaz. 

   He locked eyes with Kaz, and they turned sad and kind. Aching—Jordie had said. 

“He’s my Da,” Kaz said, suddenly so sure that he could feel it in his bones. His voice was hoarse and quiet, but it brought the room to a still. 

   Jesper yanked back, holding Kaz by the shoulders to stare at him with a gobsmacked expression. 

“Your Da? I thought he’d be dead or something!” 

“It’s news to me, too,” Kaz muttered, taking stock of his stomach and hesitantly putting the serving bowl back on the table. There was a pile of rolls scattered across the surface, which were presumably in the bowl before it had been offered to Kaz to catch his sick. 

“Did you know that?” Wylan asked, turning to Inej, hands on his hips. 

“It’s like I said, that is between Kaz, and—” 

“So how does that happen? Is he….he like, made you and then skived off and left your mum and you thought he was dead—-” Jesper started. 

“No,” Da started, bewildered. Maybe Kaz shouldn’t call him Da. Maybe he should just call him Florian. That’s right, this man wasn’t his Da, who was supposed to be dead; it was some cripple named Florian. “His mother….died, I didn’t abandon him.” 

“Debateable,” Kaz muttered, turning the whole rotten thing over and over in his mind like an oyster turning grit into a pearl. How had his Da seemingly come back to life? Was it Grisha nonsense, the way everything seemed to be these days, or something else? And why, then, if he hadn’t actually died, had Jordie and their neighbor seemed so certain that he had? 

“Well, he always says he’s a bastard, so—” 

   Flori—no, that was too strange. Da barked an angry laugh. 

“He isn’t a bastard!” He snapped. “His mother and I were married long before we had him, and he was registered on my ledger and baptised at the church.” 

“Baptised?” Jesper repeated, seemingly in disbelief. 

“They just bring you to the church and dunk your head in a bowl of water,” Wylan explained, touching his husband’s arm. 

“I know what a baptism is! Just figured that Kaz would catch on fire if he ever went in a church.” 

   Kaz laughed, unable to help himself, though even to his ears it had a hysterical tinge. 

“They do it when you’re a baby and too cute to realize you’re evil.” 

“Ahhhh,” Jesper said, one of his fingers curling around one of Kaz’s belt loops like he was afraid he was going to lose him in a crowd. “That’s how you tricked them.” 

“You aren’t—” Da closed his eyes briefly, taking a calming breath. “Whatever questions you have, I can answer. This is….just a horrible misunderstanding.” 

   A misunderstanding. What the fuck did that mean? What kind of misunderstanding could have led them here—Da looking half-dead and pathetic, and Kaz’s hands wrapped in these damned gloves? Was the whole thing a fucking misunderstanding—--Jordie selling the farm, moving to Ketterdam, Kaz making Jordie go look at the metal dogs, Pekka Fucking Rollins running a scam he’d run a million times. If Da, who had been dead, who had been dead for longer than Kaz had known him alive, was alive, then what other misunderstandings were going to make themselves known? Would Matthias round the corner, wolf at his heels, now more a man than a boy? Or the girl with the ribbon? Or Jordie? 

     Maybe that’s what the anger cresting in his breast was—-that it wasn’t Jordie sitting there, liberated from his grave. Jordie was who he really wanted to see, wasn’t he? Jordie was who he always wanted to see, though the reason varied day to day. To stop his vicious whisperings in Kaz’s ear, to laugh at Kaz’s jokes, to sleep next to him the way they had as children, to be there just so Kaz had somewhere to direct all this anger and grief that was still so strong that it often made it hard for Kaz to breathe through the pain of it. Jordie had been his only friend, his safety net, his protector—-one who had failed miserably at his duty, and Kaz still struggled with the anger and betrayal of it all. Jordie had been a boy, raising another little boy in a world that didn’t care for either of them. It hadn’t mattered that Kaz had wanted to see the dog, or that Filip had led them to Pekka Rollins, or that Firepox had destroyed them both; all these things he still carried the guilt of. Boys, stupid little country boys raised by an honest and kind-hearted father, what hope had they had in a city like this one? The moment their horse spooked, it was always going to end like this—-in tragedy. 

    Why couldn’t he have come back sooner? Why not when Kaz was younger, before he'd ever dirtied his hands with the blood of another man? When he was young and still desperately yearning for someone bigger and stronger to hold him in their arms and tell him he was okay, when he was little and not cute (starved and desperate, a beast as he was), but pathetic enough to pity. Which, to Kaz’s father, was just below love. 

   Why did he have to be alone for so long? 

   Why did Jordie have to die? 

   If he hadn’t thought Da was dead, Jordie would never have gotten the chance to take them both to Ketterdam. 

   It wasn’t Da that Kaz was angry with, and some part of him resented that his miraculous reappearance had given him yet another reason to be angry with Jordie. It was miserable, being angry with the person you loved most. Especially when they couldn’t even answer your whys or hows. 

    He didn’t want to look at the older man, because it should have been Jordie sitting there. He didn’t want to look at him because he was so fucking grateful that it wasn’t Jordie sitting there. He didn’t want to look at him because, humiliatingly, he realized that if he did, he would burst into tears the way he used to when he woke from some strange and terrible dream as a child, and Da or Jordie would ask him if he was alright. The kind of crying of a child who knows they’re going to be comforted. 

   He wished Inej had never told him any of this. He wished she hadn’t believed Da, had sent him on his way, and left Kaz blissfully ignorant. 

   Kaz shook off Jesper’s hand and stood just enough to drag his chair closer to the table, dishing himself a serving from the tureen of stew at the table. He took a bite, the food tasting like ash and thick as glue in his mouth. He swallowed it thickly, washing it down with water, and kept his eyes on the vein of gold running through the wood grain, mending where he and Wylan had cracked it apart years ago. 

“Kaz—-” Da said softly. 

   He said something else, but Kaz decided that he didn’t need to hear it. Eat, though, he could do that. Needed to do it, in fact, and he was grateful of all the years of eating slop or just gone off just to survive to get him through each bite. 

   Jesper sat next to him, becoming the buffer between Kaz and Da, hooking his finger in Kaz’s belt loop again. Wylan gave Kaz an assessing look before settling back in his chair and picking up his spoon to eat. 

“Kaz?” Inej asked him gently. 

“I’ve decided to ignore this,” Kaz answered her, tearing off a hunk of roll and tearing it into tinier pieces, not really eating it, and just throwing it onto the tablecloth. 

“I’m not quite sure that’s the best way to handle this,” Inej said, pursing her lips.

   Da was noticeably silent. 

    He knocked back his glass of wine, wincing at the bitter, sour aftertaste of it, and the way it made his mouth feel dry as sand. He hated wine—but that’s all Jesper and Wylan ever had because they were married and respectable and all that other stupid shit that meant you got drunk on wine rather than the bottles of gut-rotting brandy that Kaz hid in the back of his wardrobe for emergencies. Emergencies like your dead father coming back to life—-that was a situation wine could not help. 

“Well, maybe if I—” Da started.

“Don’t talk to me,” Kaz said flatly. “I’m not talking to ghosts tonight.” 

“I’m not—-Kaz, my baby,---” 

“Don’t!” Kaz snapped. His throat burned, clicking with the force of trying to keep back bile. 

   He wasn’t anybody’s baby—-wasn’t anybody’s son, not anymore. Fuck, he was not prepared for this. He hated not being prepared for anything. Da knew that. 

 “If we could just talk—” 

  Kaz, swift as lightning, pulled his knife from his vest, flipping it open to stab it into the wood—-just centimetres from the man’s hand. Jesper whistled lowly. 

“Kaz!” Inej sounded scandalized now. 

   Why? She knew what Kaz was. Why would he be any different now? This changed nothing. Kaz dug in his pocket, pulling out a wad of cash and handing it to Wylan. 

“For the table,” He muttered darkly, standing to leave, yanking the knife from the table. 

“Kaz?” Inej called. He paused next to her, just to look at her dear face, the pain in her scrunched brow, and allowed just a moment to be regretful that he had caused it. 

“I’ll see you at the Slat,” He said, pressing a kiss to her knuckles in passing and leaving. 

   Just as he left the house, stepping out into the dark street, the door opened and closed again behind him. Then, there was the click of metal-heeled boots on paver stones. Jesper matched his hurried pace, hands resting on the guns at his hips. 

“Where we going, boss?” He asked, voice mock-cheerful. 

“The Slat,” Kaz muttered, focusing on the ground below him, avoiding the split in cobblestones near the bridge by the manor that had caught his cane more than once. 

“Uh-huh, and what are we going to do when we get there?” Jesper turned to walk backwards, paces ahead of Kaz with the ache in his good hip and the stabbing pain in his bad one. 

“Don’t you have a husband to bother?” 

“Aww, you should know by now that you’re my favorite person to bother, Kazzie.” 

   Kaz whacked him on the shins with his cane, making him cry out in pain. 

“Fuck! You’re evil, you know that? You can be sad without starting a fight with the world!” 

“I’m not starting a fight with the world, I’m hitting you.” 

“Well, it’s rude.” 

   Kaz snorted, pausing on a bridge to catch his breath. Jesper sat gingerly on the railing, idly kicking his feet. Kaz stared down at the dark waters of the canal, trying not to think of the rot and the dim glow of Ketterdam miles ahead of him at the harbor. They lingered there in silence, or as silent as it could get in Ketterdam. He could distantly hear the clatter of hooves, the call of his runners drawing in gamblers, the faint music drifting in from a radio sat in a window somewhere, the raucous shouts from pleasure houses. 

   It was a different kind of quiet than the countryside, where you heard the bugs and the bleating of the sheep and rustle of the reeds growing in the creekbed. Did it still sound like that? Was the silence just as thick, the nights as endless? Every day sped by here. Every day felt like years and years—-a race that you never won. 

   The crack of gunshot in the night air and screams broke him from his trance. 

Jesper turned, then scoffed. “Liddies.” 

“Liddies,” Kaz agreed somberly. Liddies shooting Liddies in their own territory—idiocy of the rankest kind, and their boss was a fool for letting it go on as often as he did. 

“Let’s get back to Dregs land, huh? Where people make sense.” Jesper said, dropping to the ground, bracing an arm under Kaz’s like he was afraid that Kaz would falter. 

   The other hand stayed on his gun, just in case, and Kaz relaxed just a bit, safe in the knowledge that Jesper wouldn’t let anyone get the drop on him. 

“Amen to that,” Kaz muttered, letting Jesper lead him down the street, back home. 

Chapter Text

     Jesper followed Kaz into the Slat, giving Pim a friendly pat as they walked past him sitting on the stoop, and up the stairs to his attic rooms. He couldn’t see the other man’s expression from behind, but it must have been a doozy, because every Dreg that saw him turned and walked the other direction. One new recruit, a scrawny, pimply-faced dealer that Kaz had been hounding for weeks because he never kept his shirt tucked in on shift, let out a panicked squeak and shut himself into a closet just to get out of Kaz’s way. 

“Fucking slob—you give a rat a job, you at least expect them to comb their fucking hair,” Kaz muttered darkly, leaning heavily onto the railing the way he did when his leg was killing him. 

“Aw, give him a break, boss, he’s just a kid.” 

   Fuck, he’d called him boss again—-when was he going to stop doing that? Kaz hadn’t been his boss for far longer than he had been Jesper’s boss, but he couldn’t seem to break the habit.

“He’s twenty-nine!” Kaz snapped. He tore off his tie and flung it over the railing like it had shorted him fifteen kruge. “Twenty-nine is old enough to wash your face and tuck in your shirt and fucking—--no. I don’t know why I even bother when I’m the only one in this Ghezen-damned building with any sense of pride or respect or fucking decorum.” 

Jesper leaned out to catch the tie as it fluttered past him, tucking it into his pocket. “Shit, for real? Thought he was like fifteen or something.” 

   Kaz didn’t respond, just pushed the door open and made a beeline for his wardrobe—where Jesper knew he kept a bottle of the shitty whisky he used to get drunk. Jesper cast a longing but futile glance at the aged Kaelish whisky that he used for celebrations or deals and resigned himself to a beast of a hangover and liquor strong enough to burn off your nose hairs. 

   Jesper dropped onto the couch, stretching out to watch Kaz throw piles of clothes out of the wardrobe, cursing loudly. One of his little cats ran up to him, meowing at him loudly, plaintively pawing at his hip. The other cautiously approached the couch, and Jesper held out his hand for it to sniff. 

   Jesper was, decidedly, not a cat person. He was always a little too loud, a little too rough—dogs were less complicated, easier to understand, and the sweet little fluffy lapdog that Wylan doted on like a child was enough for him. Despite that, he could appreciate the effort of getting a cat to like you—a dog liked you immediately, no matter what, but a cat? You had to wait, you had to meet them where they were, and make no demands of them. If you could, you would have a friend for life. It was no secret why Kaz liked them so much, and they had done the other man a world of good, though he wouldn’t admit it. After he had stopped kicking them out when they invaded his rooms, he had something safe and easy to talk about that wasn’t work, and he seemed to be sleeping better. 

   The cat hissed, swatting at Jesper’s hand, and he jerked it back with a yelp. 

   Saints, he wasn’t a cat person. 

“What are their names, again?” 

“Shit and Dumb Fuck.” 

Jesper snorted, “That can’t be their names.” 

“They don’t have names; they should be grateful they aren’t in a bag in the river.” He pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth, letting the cat clamber up his body to sit across his shoulders like a fur stole. 

“You don’t mean that,” Jesper said softly. 

“I do. Miserable little beasts—what’s a Barrel rat need from a name? Survival, that’s the best any of us can hope for, who gives a fuck what you call it.” 

   Jesper huffed a disbelieving laugh. “Clearly you do, if you changed your name. Why do that, anyway? It isn’t like anyone in the Barrel knew you before, considering you grew up on a farm. Which, rude to not tell me about, we could’ve been bonding over….fields and chickens and farm chores.” 

   Kaz shot him a nasty look, and Jesper tutted playfully. 

“Nope. Usual rules, Brekker, you know the deal. I get sloshed with you, I expect emotional vulnerability.” 

“I hate that rule,” Kaz grumbled, pulling out a glass to slide Jesper’s way, and Jesper couldn’t fight a grin. He slid from the couch to sit across from Kaz on the floor, affectionately tapping his foot against the boot attached to Kaz’s good leg. 

   After a knock-down, blow-up fight of truly momentous proportions between the two of them when they were nineteen, Kaz and Jesper had established what could generously be called “rules of engagement.” (What Wylan called Dumbass Guidelines, though Jesper took offense to that nickname.) They were a set of agreements that, when followed, would defuse any situation. Among those was the rule that if Jesper were going to do something reckless with Kaz (go on a job, handle a bit of blackmail, or get blackout drunk), Kaz had to be communicative and emotionally sincere with Jesper for the duration of said life-threatening event. 

“Reitveld is a stupid, country name. You hear any Barrel boss with a name like Reitveld?” Kaz asked, pouring Jes’s glass. 

“Saints, Kerch micro-aggressions, how do you lot manage to be racist to each other?” Jesper asked, knocking back his shot and wincing at the burn that lingered in his throat. Kaz refilled it as soon as Jesper set it down. 

“It’s classism, I think,” Kaz took a long pull straight from the bottle and grimaced. “This is shit.” 

“Take a drink, it’ll get better.” 

Kaz snorted. “No, it won’t.” 

“Nah,” Jesper agreed. He grinned. “But we won’t know ‘till we try.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Kaz said, reaching to tap glass to bottle in a lazy toast, and Jesper settled in for a long night.

“And you know what else?” Kaz slurred. At some point, he had taken off both his boots and his socks, and his cold feet were shoved under the warmth of Jesper’s thigh. 

“I don’t,” Jesper said, hoping this wasn’t some kind of quiz. He hadn’t done the reading. Fuck, what was the reading? 

“I think it was fucked up to name me after my dead mother.” 

  Jesper turned to stare at him, the wheels in his head jamming and stuttering to try to make sense of what he had just been told. 

“Your mother’s name was Kaz?” 

Kaz lifted his head from the ground where he was lying to give him a nasty look. “No, you skiv. You think my mother’s name was Kaz? No one’s name is Kaz!” 

   Something about that seemed very incorrect, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. 

“I mean, I’m shocked I don’t have a complex about it or anything.” Kaz twisted to grab at the bottle of kvass, and it clattered onto its side, empty of even the smallest drop of liquor.

     Damn. Maybe they should have stopped drinking before now. No—you couldn’t be too drunk, could you? 

“Ghezen, I hate this fucking place,” Kaz cursed, shoving the bottle away in a fit of childish irritation. “It’s always wet and the street smells like piss and garbage, and I have to talk to Rotty every fucking day—--”

“Your name is Kaz!” Jesper protested, the puzzle pieces falling into place finally. “How can it be—-be nobody’s name….if it’s your name?” 

“My name is Kaspar, you podge,” Kaz answered him with disgust. 

“Kaspar?” 

“Kaz is a….a….the thing you have—-when a name is too long…”

“Nickname.” 

Kaz hiccuped. “‘S what I said. Doesn’t matter, names aren’t important.” 

“You don’t believe that,” Jesper protested. 

“Yes, I do. I think we should all stop being so attached to our names, just change them every day. My new name is…I don’t know, Johannes.” 

Jesper laughed. “You don’t look like a Johannes.” 

   Did he? Jesper leaned over the other man, looked down at his face. What did a Johannes look like? Did he look like this—-eyes closed, dark bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep, thick lashes like soot on his cheeks, upturned nose, and the little spray of faded freckles across his face? He only looked like Kaz, not anyone else. Not even the man who had burst into their cozy evening, claiming to be some ghost from the past, looked like Kaz did. How could he? He had never lain next to Kaz on some rooftop with a cone of soggy potatoes on a stakeout. He had never laughed so hard at one of Jesper’s jokes that he snorted beer up his nose. He didn’t have the crow and cup—the same one that was inked into Jesper’s arm. Whoever he was, he wasn’t Kaz, wasn’t Jesper’s friend. 

“Was that man really your Da?” Jesper asked him softly. 

   Kaz’s lips pressed together tightly, and Jesper was alarmed to see the slightest wobble of his chin. Jesper had only seen Kaz three or four times, most of them in the last two or three years, but it never failed to make him panic. He knew, of course, that it was a good thing Kaz finally felt comfortable enough to cry around them—-to cry at all, even. It was astonishing, sometimes, how much all of them had grown.  Despite that, it made something tight and uncomfortable rear its head in Jesper’s chest, and forced him to have to push down the urge to do anything to dry the tears up. 

   He nodded, but didn’t open his eyes. 

“How do you know? I mean….how do you know it’s not someone who’s made to look like your Da?” 

Kaz shrugged. “Things he said, only Da would know them.” 

“Yeah, but where you grew up, it was a small town, I assume? What if it were a neighbor or something that could tell someone all that information?” 

“It’s him,” Kaz said hoarsely. “Trust me, I wish it wasn’t.” 

    Jesper could only think of his mother--perfect and kind and heroic. What wouldn’t he give to see her again--to talk to her, to touch her? Kaz’s Da, he’d looked at him with such love, with devotion. He called him his baby. Jesper’s mum called him her baby, too, even when he wasn’t. And wasn’t that strange? He had never really considered the fact that Kaz had been little and loved at some point, that he hadn’t been born a heartless Barrel boss and had been someone’s baby once. 

“I’d give anything to have my mum back,” Jesper told him. He blinked away the burn of tears in his eyes. 

“It’s different.” 

“How?” Jesper snapped. “People would be fucking grateful to have someone they loved come back from the fucking dead. An—and you just get in your head about it and act miserable like usual!” 

“Because he’ll….he’ll expect him!” Kaz snapped, sitting up. 

“Who?” Jesper asked, bewildered, his voice high and nervous. 

“Fucking Kaspar Reitveld! And I—I’m not him!” Kaz knotted his hands together, the leather of his gloves creaking with the force of the grip he had on his fingers. “I—I’m just….Barrel trash. I’m Dirtyhands, don’t you understand?” 

   It made Jesper feel a little sick. All this time, for some stupid reason, Jesper had always assumed that Kaz’s reputation did not bother him. In fact, usually Kaz reveled in his reputation, reveled in the reality that good and decent men crossed the street to avoid him. 

“Sure. But you’re….I mean, you’re him, too.” 

“No. Not really. A–and what do I do, then?” Kaz asked him plaintively. “Hmm? How do I explain…explain what I am? Da used to lure bugs out of the house with trails of sugar; he splinted bird wings and bottle-fed kittens when their mothers died, and prayed to Ghezen morning, noon, and night. What do I tell him? That I’m a liar and a cheat, a blackmailer and a murderer? That—-that I’m so fucked up I can’t even touch people without falling to pieces?” 

   Jesper wanted to grab him and crush him into a hug, but even as wasted as he was, Jesper knew that was a bad idea.  It was funny, you never considered how much you relied on touch to comfort people until you had to comfort someone who didn’t want to be touched. 

“You don’t need to tell him shit. Not if you don’t want to. Who’s gonna tell on you if you never tell him? Me? Fat fucking chance. And if he can’t handle it, if he can’t handle what you had to do, to stay alive—— I’ll chase his ass out of town.” 

   Kaz nodded absently, staring off somewhere in the distance, but Jesper could tell his eyes weren’t looking at what was in front of him. He got like that sometimes, and his friends would try their best to bring him back without scaring him. Jesper suddenly regretted going along with the drinking—bringing him back would have been much easier without it. 

“How did you get to Ketterdam?” Jesper asked him. 

   Kaz startled, turning to look at him with wide eyes. 

“What?” 

“You thought your Da died, and then you ended up in Ketterdam. How’d that happen?” 

   Kaz cleared his throat, taking his gloves off and gently setting them to the side.

“My—” He sighed. “My older brother thought that he could become a businessman, save enough for me to go to school. He thought that we had more of a chance here than back home.” 

   Jesper swallowed around the lump in his throat—--a brother? Where was he now, this brother of Kaz’s that Jesper had never heard anything about? He didn’t ask. He was almost certain he could guess what had become of that brother. 

“He made a deal with a man called Jakob Hertzoon, the kind of sloppy trade investment that’s more gambling than deal, and lost everything we had.” Kaz glanced at him quickly, almost too quickly to notice, but Jesper noticed. 

    How could he not? Shame bubbled up in him, like a low, rolling boil of regret and humiliation, the same that dogged his early days in Ketterdam. The chase of the easy, quick win—of feeling important and lucky and learning that you’re a stupid pigeon just like everyone else. Jesper felt a great swell of grief and sympathy for Kaz’s brother, whose sins looked so much like Jesper’s own. 

“We got sick, and he died. I didn’t. I changed.” 

   Jesper let silence settle uncomfortably between them, tense and sharp as a knife. Kaz lay back down, closing his eyes, looking a little green with nausea. From the drink, most likely. Jesper wasn’t feeling the best himself. 

“What was his name? Your brother?” 

“Jordan,” Kaz said quietly, a hoarse whisper that could have been lost to a strong breeze. Kaz said it with the reverence and conviction of a street magician uttering a spell for a transfixed crowd. 

   Years later, through the haze of the drink, Jesper recalled the scene as clearly as if it had just happened. 

What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie? 

   Jesper wanted to vomit. Suddenly, things made a lot more sense—a petty vendetta, a slew of cruel accusations, and a miserable few weeks of trying to earn forgiveness from a man who hadn’t given him all the clues to navigate the terrible memories his poor choices had pulled from the waters of the bay. 

“You miss him?” 

Kaz laughed bitterly. “Do you miss your mother? He was all I had. I was all he had.” 

“Right, silly question,” He croaked. 

“If Da…never died, then what was the point of it all? Why—why did Jordie bring us here?” He asked, sounding like a lost child. Maybe he still was. 

   Jesper hooked a finger in Kaz’s belt loop, another brushing against the silk of his waistcoat, gauging his body language. Kaz remained relaxed, arms at his side, and did not raise them to cover or protect himself. He took that as a good sign and scooted closer, curling against the other boy’s side. Kaz sighed, his pinky curling around Jesper’s. 

“At least you’re here,” Kaz murmured. Jesper gave in to the sentimental urge he knew Kaz would mock him for and pressed a kiss to the silky hair at his temple. 

“C’mon, let’s go back to the manor. Your bed is terrible.” Jesper prompted him to stand, helping him tie his shoes and head out the door into the night. 

    Wylan woke from a light doze at the click of the door handle, the door to the bedroom creaking open. He tensed, the floorboards outside his room creaked loudly, and his heart pounded as he heard the low bubble of whispered voices from the hall. Then, Jesper snorted and shushed someone loudly, the way only someone three sheets to the wind could believe was quiet. He stretched under the covers, rolling his eyes at the scratchy, gasping laugh that answered the zowa, but relaxed at the familiarity of it all. 

    The door creaked open, and the two men shuffled in. Jesper groaned as he crouched down to untie Kaz’s boots, and groaned again as he stood. The mattress dipped under his weight, the warmth of Jesper’s breath brushing Wylan’s face. He reeked of Kaz’s cheap booze, but there wasn’t anything particularly unpleasant about it. 

“Hello, love, it’s just us.” 

    Wylan hummed in acknowledgement, and Jesper pulled away to gently bully Kaz into lying down. Kaz, smelling of booze and his cheap coal tar soap, was settled between Jesper and Wylan like a child settled between his parents. He had never been to a sleepover or gone camping with other boys as a child, but Wylan liked to imagine that it would have been just as wonderful as when Kaz stayed over when he and Jesper had been drinking. Absentmindedly, Wylan brushed the hair from Kaz’s face as the other man’s breathing evened out into deep sleep. Jesper’s hand reached across him to curl around Wylan’s hip, and there, warm under the covers, Wylan let himself fall back to sleep.