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Ketterdam is dark and fog-slick, as it so often is. Smog hovers around the corners of buildings. Shadows cling to their eaves.
One of those shadows is Inej.
She's eavesdropping, in the most literal interpretation of the word.
The men below her are quiet, but not quite quiet enough.
"Shh," says one, the Dregs deserter who somehow thought he could get away with it. "Not so loud. The Wraith could be anywhere."
His companion, the second-in-command of the Black Tips, snorts. "The Wraith? Ha. Where could she be? Dirtyhands' lies really got you, didn't they."
Inej smiles, secure in the suppression of the shadows.
"How would she even know to look for you?" the Black Tips member continues, snorting.
"They always know," the traitor mumbles.
"Forget it," is the reply he gets. "If you're not useful, I'll send you back. Brekker doesn't know you're here. What would he do if he found out? Tell me about the stronghold."
It's amusing, Inej thinks to herself, that the Black Tips are using Kaz as their threat against a boy who betrayed Kaz.
The boy is right, too. Kaz may not know about the betrayal yet: Inej isn't sure. He'd told her to follow any of the grunts who slipped away tonight, and she hasn't gone back yet.
How much he knows is a mystery. But he wouldn't send her for redundant information, so she stays until they shiver into a warmer part of the building, the traitor still whispering the least-protected secrets of the Dregs, and then she goes home.
"What business, Wraith?" Kaz asks as she slips through the window.
He hasn't turned to look at her, but his gloves are beside him, not on his hands. Today is a good day.
"Traitor, turned coat to the Black Tips," Inej says. She rattles off the details.
"I expected a different runner," Kaz muses, "to the Dime Lions."
Kaz is rarely wrong.
Inej shivers a little at the thought of two betrayals at once. And —
"The Wraith sets sail again next week," she says. "Don't forget that."
He does look at her then, his smile sharp and spreading. She loves him, and times like this it threatens to knock her backwards, off the ledge.
But Inej Ghafa does not fall. Instead, she steadies her breath and meets his gaze. The strength of her regard is echoed there.
"I don't forget things about you," Kaz says. "The traitors won't take that long to clean up. I'd rather get it done now, with you: you are my best spider."
"I'm the Wraith," Inej corrects.
Kaz sighs, playing at annoyance. "My best Wraith," he snaps, and Inej's heart walks a tightrope and leaps. It lands true. It always does. "Better?"
"Much," she says.
She would not have expected to like it, being called someone's. "If you've waited for me, I'll do it."
Kaz doesn't reply. He doesn't need to.
"If you are asking for my help, you have it," Inej clarifies, because she means it. She will not always go where he commands, but if he is asking, it is a different matter.
"You are the Wraith's Barrel King," she says, as an afterthought. That's the real reason she likes it: it goes both ways. If it was anyone else, it would not be the same. "My Dirtyhands."
His breathing flutters, then, a tiny thing, a crack in the mask. His bare hands are flexing against the table.
They are each other's in the same way Ketterdam is theirs; because they have made what it is, because they love it, because they chose it. There is no contract, no claim, no indenture. Just… them. Them, and a city, and two traitors.
"What's the plan?"
Kaz meets her eyes. He looks unmoored, unarmoured. "What makes you think I already have a plan?"
Inej laughs, deep from her belly, and settles beside him, perched on the desk. They do not touch. They do not need to.
"Kaz, I know you."
He laughs then, too, and tells her.
The plan goes wrong: it always does.
Kaz's contingency plan works: it always does.
He sees her and The Wraith off at docks, after: he always will.