Chapter Text
PART I: INEJ
***
No one noticed the shadow slip through the doors of the church, its hinges—which the acolytes had forgotten to oil yet again—silent despite their rust. A flicker of a flame in the apse, suddenly lit and placed gently alongside rows of its brethren, another silent call to the Saints, or whoever else might be listening: a plea. The shadow stood before them all, the light of the candles not bright enough to give shape to its face in the gloom.
The shadow was a frequent visitor to the church in Little Ravka. No one but the Saints ever knew she’d been there.
Forgive me—spoken softly up into the eaves. There, and then gone. No echo.
***
Inej had long ago given up on fate. In the Barrel, you couldn’t afford to wait for fate to decide your future; you had to seize it yourself—by force, more often than not. It was a hard lesson she learned early and fast, a lesson that had urged her to step forward from the shadows, to whisper ‘I can help you’ to the Bastard of the Barrel, even as her fingers shook with fear. Fate did not set Kaz Brekker’s eyes upon her; no, she did that, alone, out of her own boldness.
Of course, there was the crueler possibility—the one that kept her up at night, fastidiously sharpening her knives in lieu of resting—the possibility that fate had intended to drag her, kicking and screaming, from her parents’ vardo, intended to clap her in chains and be sold on her back. That she hadn’t really seized anything, but had instead fallen into Ketterdam’s greedy hands at the very behest of her beloved Saints. But then she would glimpse the mottled scar tissue on her hipbone in the liquid mercury of her bedside mirror, and remember that fate had no business with her after all.
It was one of the first things she carved out of herself after she left the Menagerie—alongside Tante Heleen’s cursed brand. Men had loved pressing their fingertips to it, scraping teeth across it, mocking her. ‘Got a soulmate, Little Lynx? Not tonight you don’t.’ They left bruises across her body, a pale facsimile of that most holy soulmark she once wore with pride—now an ugly mess of badly-healed skin. The moment she was freed from the Menagerie, she’d obliterated it: no one would have a claim to her body again, not even one gifted her by fate.
She remembered the name, of course. It was a Suli name. From the choked haze of Ketterdam’s rooftops, it was hard to imagine ever walking amongst her People again, ever meeting a nice, bronze-skinned boy with quick feet and a penchant for acrobatics, one who would bring her wild geraniums to catch her eye and her heart. Here, in Kaz’s office, it was hard to imagine ever wanting such a thing in the first place.
Kaz sat at his makeshift desk, dutifully copying out the ledgers for Per Haskell’s review, even though he never needed a written log to remember who had won big or lost hard at The Crow Club. His gloves were on, but he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and stretched out his bad leg. He was as relaxed as she ever saw him. Logically, she knew he must have a soulmark somewhere, though she’d never seen it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
No, here, in Kaz’s office, perched on his windowsill, scattering crumbs for the crows, it was hard to imagine wanting anyone but him.
She felt his eyes on her, searching and shrewd. She no longer shrank under the weight of his attention like she had in her first weeks with the Dregs. It hadn’t been a sudden change, but rather a slow unclenching of her guard. The more he proved he wanted nothing from her body, the less afraid of him she was.
“I’ll need you for a job tomorrow,” he said in that telltale, rock-salt rasp. “Jesper too. Dusk.”
She dared a glance at him—he was looking at his ledger again, hair falling over his brow where the gel had lost its hold. “Where?”
“Fifth Harbor. Razorgulls are edging onto our turf again. Time to knock them back a peg.”
Knowing Kaz, that was only half the story. But part of being a Crow was trusting Kaz to have a plan, and trust she did.
He set his pen down, leaning back in his seat. The sun slipped below the horizon, and the shadows in Kaz’s room lengthened, crawling across the floorboards. If Inej held her breath, the moment would feel like a dream.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asked without thinking. It wasn’t part of their routine for her to question him, especially about something so personal. He frowned, disapproval in his gaze. “—I just mean, beyond the Slat. The Dregs. You won’t be young and scrappy forever, and neither will I.”
Kaz chuckled humorlessly. “I’ll die long before my body gives out on me.”
His words brought a lump to her throat. She didn’t like when he spoke so carelessly about his own life. “You don’t have goals?”
He placed a finger to his lips, mocking deep thought. “Money. Power. Death before I lose it all.”
“No dreams?” Her fingers ghosted over her hipbone absentmindedly.
“What are you really asking, Inej?”
Leave it to him to cut through her like a knife. She knew what she wanted from him, and what she likely wouldn’t get. Sweet nothings weren’t in Kaz’s repertoire. It would be foolish for her to assume he might ever imagine a partner at his side, a friend, or maybe more. If only, if only. No, his lovers were the stacks of kruge he counted every fortnight before depositing them at the bank, or the gold coins tucked reverently in his safe. She could never forget where the arrow of his heart truly aimed.
“Nothing.” She crumbled another piece of bread between her fingers, tossing the scraps to the one lone crow on the sill, its feathers an oil slick against the dusty gray of the city skyline. Kaz let the matter drop.
***
“Kruge for your thoughts?”
Inej tilted her head up at the tall, lanky man beside her. The green of his waistcoat clashed spectacularly with the dandelion yellow of his velvet trousers. Jesper was bold in every place Inej was not, with his loud suits and dazzling grin, his twin pearl-handled pistols slung low on his hips. If Inej was the moon, Jesper was the sun, shining ever-brighter as she waned into darkness.
“I doubt you have coin to spare,” she snorted, eyes trained on the passing crowd. Kaz told them to wait for his signal, and she was determined not to miss it.
Jesper puffed out his cheeks as he sighed. “That’s fair. Okay, no kruge for your thoughts, but I do promise you my undying devotion, which, let’s be honest, is far more valuable.”
Her lips twitched in a smile. Jesper was just as quick with his words as he was with his bullets. “I’m thinking that Kaz will kill us if we don’t time this exactly right.”
“Ah, yes. Kaz.”
Inej knew that tone. They’d had this argument before, and Inej wondered when they’d grown close enough for Jesper to dare prod such a tender bruise. “It’s not like that.”
“How do you know?” Jesper waggled his eyebrows. “Never know until you try.”
You see, Jesper had come to the impossible conclusion that Inej and Kaz were soulmates, based on no more than his own speculation and loud commitment to being wrong. Nothing she could say would dissuade him, and it’s not like she still had a soulmark available to prove otherwise. Kaz certainly wouldn’t entertain such a thing, even to prove a point. He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
“C’mon, Inej! I see the way he looks at you. He never looks at me like that, or anyone else for that matter.” Although they’d never discussed it at length, Inej knew Jesper held a deep respect for his own soulmark, that curly script that swirled around the shell of his ear. Wylan the letters spelled, loopy and lyrical. He never made any efforts to hide it, instead tilting his hat over the other ear, leaving the name exposed. A calling card, an advert, a plea.
For all his surety in his soulmate-to-be, he was dead wrong about her and Kaz. Kaz wasn’t her soulmate, nor she his. It was an ugly truth, but she swallowed it. And she kept doing so, day after day, even though her heart seemed to fight her at every turn.
She didn’t say any of this. Instead, she slumped back into their usual banter, into safety. “I see why you keep losing all your money. You place terrible bets.”
“Not this time. Inej—”
As though summoned by her need to escape, a loud bang shook the cobblestones beneath their feet, a cloud of smoke billowing up from down the Stave. Inej’s feet were running before she could tell them to, running to the fight, running to the blood and the sweat and the filth, running to him.
“This isn’t over!” Jesper called, sprinting to catch up to her. “You can’t run from fate forever!”
Watch me, she thought, sliding a knife from its sheath at her waist, the weight of it familiar between her fingers. Saints forgive me for what I am about to do.
***
“It isn’t like I thought it’d be,” Nina sighed.
Nina was draped luxuriously across the chaise in her suite at the White Rose, while Inej perched lightly in her window. When Nina spoke, Inej turned her face away from where she’d been trying to catch a breeze off the harbor, eyeing her friend carefully. A hot, sweaty fug had overtaken the city, the streets heavy with smog that had nowhere to go. Perfect curls of red hair clung to Nina’s neck as she fanned herself, sweat beading on her upper lip. Her silken robe had slipped down one shoulder, exposing the neat line of her soulmark on her collarbone.
“What isn’t?”
Nine sighed again, fluttering her lashes. “Love.”
They’d spoken about Nina’s luckless Fjerdan before, the one separated from her by two miles of brackish water and at least three layers of iron bars. That was the reason Nina had joined the Dregs in the first place, to leverage Matthias’s freedom. Inej could not imagine trading her freedom for a man, even a soulmate, but it had always been clear that she and Nina lived very different lives.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see him again…”
Inej knew—well, she had gleaned through less-than-reputable means—that Kaz was concocting a plan to infiltrate Hellgate. Still, she didn’t dare mention it to Nina lest Kaz’s scheming fail. Nina didn’t deserve another heartbreak.
She turned back to the window, catching sight of the glimmering blue gem of the True Sea; somewhere, amongst the sapphirine waves, Nina’s lover languished. “My mother used to say that meeting my father was like hearing thunder on the horizon.”
“How do you mean?”
For a moment, Inej was thrust back amongst the memories of warm spices scenting the air of their vardo, the hiss of oil in a pan, clusters of delicate-petaled flowers at every elbow, with soil still clinging to their roots. A kiss on the cheek, a warm smile, held hands. It ached. She cleared her throat. “Like how you hear it and know a storm is coming, but it hasn’t reached you yet.”
“Hm.” Nina contemplated this for a moment. “It was different for us. I mean, obviously, we were natural enemies, what with him kidnapping me and all. I didn’t even know who he was supposed to be until we washed ashore and had to huddle naked for warmth, and I got an eyeful of everything.”
“So, no thunder?”
“Not unless you count the storm that sank the ship.” Nina chuckled to herself. “He’d probably liken it more to that dreadful permafrost his country loves so much. Coming unfrozen at a glacial speed.” The mirth drained from her face. “Only to freeze over the next winter. Saints, he must hate me for what happened.”
Kaz’s secret plot threatened to spill from her tongue, but she wasn’t the Dregs’ seeker and keeper of secrets for nothing. Her resolve held. “We’ll find a way, and then you’ll fix it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Inej caught a whiff of sea salt on her tongue, fresh and crisp. “In my language, we don’t have a word for soulmates, more of a proverb. The best I can translate is, ‘future harmony of the heart and soul.’ That is to say, Matthias is the thunder on your horizon, and the storm is in your future.”
Behind her fan, Nina smiled.
***
It was raining heavily the night she and Kaz broke into Van Eck’s house to steal his DeKappel. Every so often, a slice of lightning would split the sky, casting eerie shadows across the city skyline. Thunder rumbled in her bones as Kaz picked the lock to the third-floor window, cracking it just enough so they could slip inside.
Theirs was a language that did not require words. Inej picked her way across the room, guiding Kaz to the darkest shadows, the quietest floorboards. He followed without question, trusting her feet as much as she did. They glided silently across the room, twin ghosts.
Van Eck’s gallery was, as he’d loudly boasted to the press, nigh impenetrable. The locking mechanism he’d had installed on the doors required at least four hands to unlock, one key in each slot, turned simultaneously. That was to say nothing about the dogs guarding the property and the private security crawling through the walls. Easy enough to avoid, if one knew what they were doing.
Kaz had drilled her on this next part relentlessly, guiding her hands through the movements over and over, until she could do it in her sleep. The trick was that only one of the locks needed to be picked to free all four, but once unlocked, the four needed to be turned at the same time in order to release the door. Kaz would do the tricky part, and all Inej had to do was turn two of the locks when he did.
Simple enough.
Like magic, a set of picks appeared in Kaz’s hands, delicate spikes of metal he wielded as easily as she used to walk a tightrope. She pulled the two levers he’d given her from her pocket, positioning them by the two locks that were her responsibility. She felt more than saw when the main lock released, and Kaz didn’t have to breathe a word for her to know her cue. In tandem, they turned all four locks, and the door released from its frame, sighing gently on its hinges.
The next part was hers alone, and she shimmied through the crack in the door to enter Van Eck’s gallery. The walls dripped with lavish oils and gilded frames, but none was worth as much—or had garnered such boastful pride—as the DeKappel in the center.
Kaz had warned her there would be a trip alarm. The frame was mounted to the wall with a length of wire on an iron hook. The hook, of course, was rigged to spring the alarm if the weight of the painting changed. Kaz, brilliant schemer that he was, had calculated exactly the mass of the canvas, frame, and hardware, and had fashioned a metal weight the exact heft of it all together. She barely had to think as she lifted the frame gently off the wall, leaving in its place the manufactured weight on a thin metal wire. It took no time at all to pry the nails on the painting’s backing off with a small crowbar in order to roll it out of its mount. In its place, she left a blank stretch of burlap, exactly the same in grams as the DeKappel itself. Quickly, she replaced the DeKappel-less frame on the wall—bare, obvious. She pocketed the dummy weight, feeling it drop thickly at her waist. The next time Van Eck came to revel at his own wealth, he would be sorely disappointed.
She passed the rolled masterpiece to Kaz, where it disappeared into the folds of his coat. Together, they relocked the gallery’s door, leaving it the same as they found it. No one would be the wiser.
It was a matter of moments to climb the rope they’d left dangling up to the roof, where Kaz coiled it and looped it across his shoulder. They dropped neatly into the boughs of an old elm tree, waiting quietly for the change in the guards below. From there, they scurried across the grass and hopped the wall beside the canal, landing in the longboat tethered there.
Kaz oared them slowly with the current, the boat cutting noiselessly across the murky water. Soon, the waters soured beneath their feet and the sounds of revelry picked up in their ears, beckoning them home to the Barrel.
In a rare gesture of generosity, Kaz treated her to a bowl of hutspot. They ate standing beneath the awning of a nearby shop, the rain still pouring down around them. He was in an unusually jovial mood, the thrill of a successful heist lifting his dour spirits. It was why she often agreed to these narcissistic schemes, the ones he performed not for profit, but for sport.
“Think of it,” he grinned, staring out across the Stave. “All that publicity, all that boasting, and he still lost. I wonder if he’ll make mention of it or try and sweep it under the rug. Either way, he’s been humiliated.”
“Careful you don’t fall into the same trap. Someday, your hubris may get the best of you.”
Kaz’s chuckle was the sound of stone on stone. “I suppose your people have a proverb for that, do they?”
“Several.”
“Regardless, Van Eck can’t afford hubris the way I can,” Kaz said, eyes sliding across to her. The corner of his mouth crooked in a smile. “He doesn’t have a Wraith, now does he?”
It was the closest he ever came to telling her ‘good job.’ His eyes glowed a brilliant coffee-brown, and for a moment, she was swept up in his gaze, hypnotized. So much of understanding Kaz was learning to hear the words hiding in other words, to understand what he was trying to say without saying it.
Some days, she wished he would just say it to her face, so she would stop having to guess.
Kaz turned away first. “A successful day, all in all.” I enjoyed scheming with you. “Tomorrow, don’t forget we have the meeting with the Black Tips.” I’ll be looking for you there.
Inej ate her hutspot and warmed her heart over the coals of Kaz’s quiet affection.
***
“I met him,” Jesper groaned, wilting delicately across the bartop.
Inej signaled for a round of drinks on his behalf, predicting the direction the conversation was headed; she was a better gambler than Jesper. “Met who?”
“My soulmate.”
She paused, perplexed. “And this isn’t a good thing because…?”
Jesper raised his head, shooting her a plaintive look. “He didn’t say anything about it! I kept mentioning my name, like an idiot, waiting for him to catch on, and he never did! Or he just doesn’t care.”
They’d all heard stories, of course. After all, this was The Barrel, and horrible people could inevitably make horrible soulmates. But it was different for Jesper, someone who had always looked forward to meeting his soulmate, who tipped his hat a certain way to keep his mark visible, who dressed in the ugliest, most garish patterns because he wanted to be seen.
Why would fate deal a man like that such a losing hand?
The bartender—one of Kaz’s newer hires, who looked like he would piss himself in fear any time Inej so much as looked at him—placed two glasses of amber liquor down before them, sloshing them a little too hard. Moisture pooled underneath their faceted bases, twin rings on the varnished wood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, nudging the first glass of malt whiskey closer to Jesper’s waiting hand, smearing its perfect ring. “I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”
“Right,” Jesper huffed, chugging his drink in one go. Inej passed him the second glass, which he lingered on. “I mean, screw it, right? I have nothing left to lose, not when I barely know the guy. If he wants to pretend we’re not soulmates, hell! I’ll put on the greatest show he’s never seen! Show him what’s what.”
“Or you could ask him about it, like an adult.”
“Just like you ask Kaz?”
It was a low blow, but Jesper didn’t seem to realize it. He knocked back the dregs of the second drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
Inej caught Kaz’s eye across the room, where he stood watch over the tables, a shark hungry for fresh blood. He arched a brow, daring her. She looked away first.
“I’ve told you a thousand times, Jes. We aren’t soulmates.”
Jesper threw his head back and cackled, carefree and tongue loose from the whiskey. “So what? At the end of the day, does it really matter?”
“But—”
“Listen,” Jesper sobered, running a hand down his face. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I watched my parents growing up, I saw how in love they were. I just wanted to speed ahead to that, to that kind of happiness. And then I watched my father grieve, and I grieved too, and I needed to meet my soulmate as soon as possible so we could have as many years together as possible before…”
Inej laid a hand over his wrist, squeezing lightly. He turned his palm upwards to lace their fingers.
“You never know how much time you have. Whoever’s waiting for you, maybe they’re worth it, maybe they’re not. If you’re happy now, be happy. Don’t let something as mundane as a soulmark get in the way.”
“I had a butcher carve mine off.”
“All the more reason.”
“Maybe Kaz doesn’t have one.”
“Maybe Wylan doesn’t either.”
They stared at each other, a million thoughts shared between them; two good people The Barrel had mangled into perverted versions of themselves, blindly searching for one valuable thing amongst the grime and the vice. Jesper squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
Later, she slipped through Kaz’s window, knowing, as she always did, that he would be seated at his desk, pen in hand. He looked up as she entered, but she hovered at the windowsill, maintaining a spiteful distance. “Did you know?”
“Know what?” he asked, although she was sure he knew exactly what.
“When you sent Jesper to find Wylan. Did you know?”
Kaz’s eyes were inscrutable. “How was I to know it was the right Wylan?”
Ah. So it would be like that, then. “Are you trying to torment him?”
“Who? Wylan?”
“Jesper!”
“Ah.” Kaz leaned back in his chair, stretching out his bad leg. He was entirely too relaxed for Inej’s liking. “I suppose I thought sending Jesper would be…enticing. You know why I need Wylan. Now I need Wylan to need me, or at least, need The Dregs.”
Inej practically vibrated with her rage. “I think your plan backfired.”
“That has yet to be seen.”
“Your best sharpshooter is currently downstairs drinking himself into a stupor and gambling away the little money he has left!”
“So, it’s Tuesday.”
Inej pursed her lips, glaring at him. “Do you truly care so little about us? Do you see our lives as chess pieces for you to manipulate in some perverse game?”
She was under no illusion that she could force Kaz to feel shame. He turned back to his papers, face impassive as ever. “I extended Jesper’s credit earlier this evening.”
To Kaz, that might qualify as an apology. But it wasn’t enough. “That’s not what he needs, and you know it.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Wraith. If you plan to sit here and criticize me all evening, you might as well be out doing the job that I pay you for. I grow weary of your judgment.”
She waited, hoping he would say more, hoping his decency would get the better of him. As she so often was, she was left disappointed.
She slipped through his window and took to the rooftops, flying across the city on light feet, nothing but a shadow, nothing more than a ghost. A Wraith. Kaz’s Wraith, although tonight that fact was harder to stomach than usual.
When she finally returned to the Slat and curled up in her tiny bedsit, tucked beneath Kaz’s attic room, where she could hear every creak of the floorboards under his unsteady gait, Inej tried to piece together a different man in her head, one with bronze skin and dark eyes. One with thick black hair and dancer’s feet. The image kept slipping from her mind’s eye, intangible. Inevitably, she returned to gloved hands and a black-coffee gaze, to hard edges and coattails stained with blood.
***
“He’s a bit scrawny, isn’t he?” Nina whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. She was referring, of course, to the baby-faced, ringleted silhouette of Wylan across the berth, crouching down to nestle explosives beneath the dock. Inej peeked her head above the shipping crates they were crouched behind, watching as Wylan wiped his face with hands stained gunpowder black, leaving a smear across his forehead.
“Not all of us like our men as tall as mountains.”
“Hm,” Nina sighed dreamily, undoubtedly picturing Matthias in some manner of undress. “I suppose I thought Jesper would end up with someone a little more…I don’t know, broad?”
“They haven’t ended up together yet,” Inej sighed, watching Wylan scurry back into the shadows, where Kaz waited for him. Naturally, Inej had already spotted Wylan’s soulmark, though, to be fair, it was hard to miss. His was scrawled across his forearm, plain to see, a neatly-printed JESPER. Everyone noticed, but Jesper had made it clear that he didn’t want it mentioned, and the threat of Kaz over his shoulder kept the other Dregs in line.
“Oh, but be serious! They’re bound to end up together, it’s fate. Soulmates always do.”
Inej pointedly did not respond, her drunken conversation with Jesper lingering in the back of her mind. The idea of soulmates had begun to sour, the image of a nice, Suli boy fading away into dust. Inej wasn’t sure she believed in the inevitability of them anymore, the way Nina still seemed to. But Nina was also still clinging to the hope of seeing her Fjerdan again, so perhaps that belief was born more of fear than conviction.
“Here they come,” Nina pointed, and Inej followed her finger, catching sight of their targets’ silhouettes in the fog off the harbor. “Showtime!”
It would always astound her, the way Nina could become someone completely different at the drop of a hat. Her sure footing stumbled as she made her way across the cobblestones, her body weaving back and forth. The perfect posture of her shoulders slumped, and she looked uncannily like a drunk pigeon wandering out from a gambling hall. The low-cut neckline of her dress and the wild freedom of her curls were bound to attract the attention of any warm-blooded men, like flies to a pitcher plant. Sure enough, the black-clad merchers paused, eyeing Nina up like a prime slice of meat.
“Out here all alone?” one of them called as his compatriots guffawed. “Need a helping hand?”
Nine grinned lazily, eyes glassy. It would take someone who knew her extraordinarily well to notice the intelligence glittering behind her faux-bleary gaze. “I think I’m, hm, lost?” Nina simpered, tripping over an invisible obstacle. One of the men reached out to steady her, fingers encircling her arm possessively.
“Oh, well now, we can’t have that,” their mark said, stepping forward. Inej sat a little straighter, tracking his every movement. He brushed aside his companion’s hand, replacing it with his own. Inej saw Nina wince as his fingers dug tighter into her flesh.
“I-I just need help to my hotel. I don’t w-want any trouble,” Nina stammered.
“Oh really?” their mark said. “A girl out this late, dressed like that, not looking for trouble? Could’ve fooled me.” He leaned in, almost nose-to-nose with her. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”
It was at that precise moment that Wylan’s bombs did the trick. The dock blew to pieces, slivers of wood raining down around them. Nina threw her cloak over her head, shielding herself from the shrapnel with the fabricator-made, bulletproof material. Inej darted out from her hiding place, striking while their mark and his friends busied themselves with shielding their faces. She snagged the necessary papers from several pockets, scooping up the sailor’s ledger from where the tallest of the men had dropped it to protect his eyes. She snagged Nina’s hand and they ran, towards where Kaz and Wylan lay in wait to receive them. They’d almost made it by the time their mark barreled into her.
Inej hit the ground, hard. The ledger went skittering across the cobblestones. “Grab it!” she cried, trying to shake off the hands gripping her legs. Nina dove for the book, wrapping it in her arms. She turned to try and help, but Inej shook her head. “Go!” she yelled.
The man’s hands crawled up her legs as Nina reluctantly abandoned her, disappearing into the dark of the alleyway. Inej unsheathed Sankta Alina and turned to slice her attacker to ribbons.
She froze, fingers losing their grip on her knife, which fell to the pavement with a clatter. The man seemed equally surprised to see her, his brilliant blue eyes widening in shock and delight. “Well then, little Lynx,” he leered. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Memories flooded all five of her senses, choking her. The heady smell of incense, sickly sweet and ever-present. The scratch of cheap silks sliding off her body as men undressed her. The taste of blood as she bit her tongue at the pain, the horror of it. The sound of heavy breathing and pleasured grunts, the ugly slap of skin on skin.
She had never learned his name, only his preferences. From her perches high in the eaves and the murk of the night’s fog, she hadn’t recognized him, hadn’t realized who exactly he was. She hadn’t known to be prepared.
Inej retreated into that small, far-away place she always had before, the place she went in her mind when the world was too much to bear. Distantly, she felt the mercher groping her legs, her ass, her waist, taking what he felt belonged to him. Her head fell back, and she let it happen, let her limbs go soft and pliant. He had never liked it when she fought back. It was easiest to simply disappear.
Vaguely, she heard her name being called. That might be Tante Heleen, demanding she perform better, put her back into it. She arched her spine slightly, the way she’d been taught. She didn’t want another beating this week.
All of a sudden, those hands were gone from her body. She remained in that liminal space, floating far away. There was a vicious squelch beside her, a yelp, and then silence. That didn’t concern her. She just had to survive until it was over, and she could cry alone in her room.
“Inej!”
Glazed eyes caught on coffee-brown, anger and fire and everything all at once within them. They were familiar eyes, even in their anger. Kaz. He had come for her.
Her body felt like her own once more. Shakily, she sat up, fingers searching for Sankta Alina. Something settled in her once she felt the cool metal against her palm.
She was the Wraith, not the Lynx. She was Kaz’s spider, not Heleen’s whore. Not anymore.
“What in Ghezen’s name, Inej!” Kaz seethed, forehead furrowed in irritation.
She sheathed her knife, avoiding his eyes. She caught sight of what was left of the man, a pulp of blood and bone and whatever rage Kaz had taken out on him. Kaz’s shoes were steeped in blood.
“Can we go?” she asked, suddenly exhausted. If she was going to be yelled at, she’d rather it be in the Slat, where it was warm and dry.
Kaz paused, as if expecting an apology, or an explanation. When none was forthcoming, he turned his back to her and stalked off, leaving bloody footprints in his wake. A light rain picked up overhead, washing away the traces of his presence. She followed quietly, letting the storm erase the evidence of their evening from the berth.
Kaz said nothing the whole way home, not even when they caught up to Nina and Wylan. Wylan peeled off to his own abode after Kaz handed him his promised stack of kruge. Nina passed the ledger back to Inej, murmuring a quick, “you alright?” Inej managed a convincing-enough nod, so Nina made for her room at the White Rose.
Still, Kaz said nothing.
At the second-to-last floor landing, where Inej’s room was crammed into a corner, she passed the ledger and the few other relevant papers to Kaz before he continued up to his attic, feet and cane heavy on the stairs. She was tempted to apologize, but she didn’t want to hear what his response to that would be. The moment she laid her head on her pillow, she dropped into a fitful sleep.
Nightmares were an old friend. When she’d first joined the Dregs, they had happened every night, like clockwork. A revolving door of men would flash before her eyes, the way they’d pawed at her breasts, the way they’d lavished her with praise, or belittled her with crass words. Some liked to think they were lovers, the two of them, consummating some powerful romance. Some liked to pull her hair and spit in her face, and smack her hard enough to bruise.
She woke violently, the memory of a man pinning her to the mattress ripped out from under her. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was or what had woken her, so she did what came naturally—lashed out with her fists. Her knuckles met bone with a crunch.
“Fuck!” someone cried, cradling their nose. Blood splattered down their face, over their lips. It took an embarrassingly long time for Inej to realize who she had hit.
“Kaz?” she asked, voice shaking.
“Unfortunately,” he groaned, wiping blood on his sleeve. “Your screaming woke me.”
She was in her room in the Slat, the one below Kaz’s attic. He had come when he heard her cries, and she had hit him. “Saints, Kaz, I’m sorry.”
He grunted, palpating his nose. “I’ve had worse.”
She knew he had, but still. She never wanted to be the one who hurt him.
He sat heavily on the lid of her trunk, still wiping blood from his face. “I suppose I should be grateful it was your fist and not one of your Saints.”
Shame settled hot and heavy in her gut. “I owe you an apology, Kaz.”
“More than the one you just gave me?”
“Not for your nose—although yes, I am sorry about that.” She curled her legs under her, twiddling with the end of her braid. “I meant for earlier tonight. The job.”
He looked at her steadily, emotionless. She couldn’t tell whether he was angry, appreciative, confused, hurt.
She continued. “It was a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again.”
“Yes, it will,” Kaz said, leaning back against the wall. He looked young in a way he didn’t usually. “It was beyond your control, and I can’t plan for things you can’t control.”
Her heart sank. “Are you firing me?”
“Am I?” Kaz asked, arching a brow. “What I said is that I can’t plan for things you can’t control.”
She huffed, annoyed. “So what? I’m just supposed to control the uncontrollable?”
He shook his head with a sigh. “Tonight, you were lucky. I was there. I might not always be there. Neither might Jesper, or Nina. If you’re all alone, and there is no one to save you, I need you to be able to protect yourself.”
“You can’t afford a liability, is that it?”
“I can’t afford—” Kaz sucked in a deep breath as well as he could around his swollen nose. She watched several unintelligible emotions flicker across his face in rapid succession, before he landed on resignation. “Yes, that’s it. I can’t afford a liability.” He stood, looking grumpier than before. “Try and sleep, and if you could, keep the screaming to a minimum. I have work to do.”
The door closed more aggressively than necessary, and Inej was left alone to wonder what Kaz was trying to say. She never wanted to be a liability, and she certainly never wanted to lose Kaz’s respect. As she lay back down in bed, pulling the blankets high around her shoulders, she resolved to never let her emotions get the best of her again.
In the morning, there was a plain wooden box left outside her room. Inside was a gleaming new knife, small enough to tuck inside a boot. It was heavy and smooth in her hands, clearly expensive. She dubbed it Sankta Maradi.
As the day progressed, news spread like wildfire that a group of merchers had been cruelly slaughtered in their beds in the early hours of the morning, every major artery sliced into until they bled slowly out across their expensive sheets. She recognized their faces from the harbor the night before. It was as much of an apology as she would ever get; she considered it enough.
***
From that day forward, something shifted within her. Gone was the fantasy of a nice Suli boy, hands full of geraniums, heart light and unburdened. Whatever hope of that future she’d been clinging to, she let it go easy. No mourners, no funerals.
Still, there was no guarantee that Kaz would ever see her as more than a convenient weapon, his unparalleled spider, his Wraith. But when they moved together through the darkness, speaking their private language of gestures and meaningful glances, Inej thought she could be satisfied with this life. It was no bright, brilliant future—not when it was bathed in so much blood, the way it necessarily had to be in the Barrel—but it was hers and no one else’s. It was her chosen path.
She visited the church in Little Ravka one final time. Her Saints would always be dear to her, always be watching over her. But the holiness of this sanctuary had fallen away, and in it, she no longer felt cradled by the Saints’ love when she lit a candle in the apse, no longer felt caught up in their current. Her sanctuary now was the wind in her hair, the knives at her waist. She was Inej Ghafa, and she chose to swim against the tide, her Saints left nipping at her heels.
Forgive me—she whispered one final time. Her words left no echo, as they never had before.
***
A month later, the Ferolind set sail for Fjerda.