Chapter Text
Inej’s mind swirled with thoughts as she felt her long raven colored locks being twisted and deftly crossed by slender lockpick hands. Kaz’s pale skin contrasted with Inej’s caramel-toned exterior, and the sunlight hitting her from where she sat on the windowsill made the contrast even starker. To an onlooker, the suli spider would look like the saints she believed in, a halo of golden sun around her, her dark lashes fanning the high cheekbones of an acrobat. The pale boy behind her looked like a ghost, or a demon. A vision to the saintly girl, or perhaps a manifestation of her inner turmoil. Once or twice Inej had felt his fingertips brush against her back, but while she paid no mind, he would have to stop for a moment. But he would always start again, no matter how long the pause. Fingers more suited to lockpicking than twisting ropes of silky hair into a plait. The closer the end of the rickrack, he sped up. Finally, Kaz paused, almost a foot away, holding the end of the braid.
"Inej?"
"Yes, Kaz?"
The silence rang out as the Slat echoed with the sounds of the Dregs downstairs.
"How do I…"
"Oh. Let me."
She turned the braid over her shoulder, and tied it off with a blue lace ribbon.
It was quiet for a moment. Kaz and Inej looked at each other. She smiled, looking away, a raspberry colored flush spread over her cheeks. Kaz blinked.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes. It's lovely."
Kaz nodded. He pulled his gloves over his pale hands, and took the crow cane into his hand. The stairs creaked with the weight of Dirtyhands’ limp and cane, the old hostel’s rain buckets dripping steadily into warped wooden floors below. Each step announced him to the Slat in a language it knew well—tap, drag, thud. The sound threaded through the din of laughter and argument rising from the gambling tables downstairs.
Inej remained at the window a moment longer.
Ketterdam stretched beyond the glass in crooked lines of brick and smoke, masts spearing the low sky, gulls wheeling and shrieking over the harbor. The late afternoon light caught on the canal water and shattered it into gold. She pressed her palm lightly to the braid at her back, feeling the neat pull of it against her scalp.
He had been careful.
Clumsy, perhaps. Slow. But careful.
Her lips curved upwards, a small smile gracing her exquisite features.
Below, someone cursed loudly—Jesper, if she judged the tone correctly—and the crash of a chair scraping against the floorboards echoed up the stairwell. Life in the Slat never quieted; it only shifted pitch. Inej slipped from the windowsill with the silent grace of an acrobat and crossed the room. She paused at the top of the stairs, fingers grazing the banister. For a heartbeat, she listened.
Tap. Drag. Thud.
Kaz was halfway down, back straight despite the limp, black coat falling around him like a shadow that refused to detach. The crow’s head of his cane glinted faintly in the dim light. He did not look back.
He never did.
Inej descended without a sound, keeping to the edges where the wood was strongest. When she reached the last step, she leaned lightly against the wall beside the staircase. Kaz stood at the center of the room, already commanding it without raising his voice.
The Dregs parted around him instinctively.
He murmured something to Rotty, low and clipped. Rotty nodded quickly and darted off. Kaz’s gloved fingers adjusted the line of his cuffs with habitual precision. He seemed carved from frost and ink.
But when his gaze flicked upward—only for a fraction of a second—it found her.
It held.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice. Long enough for her.
Inej tilted her head slightly, the faintest acknowledgment. A silent question. A silent promise.
She would swear on all the Saints that she saw the barest flicker, a shadow of a smile.
The rain picked up outside, striking the windows in uneven bursts. Water dripped into the waiting buckets with dull plinks, the Slat breathing damp and smoke and the metallic tang of the harbor.
Kaz turned away first, as he always did.
But his hand lingered for a moment at the top of his cane, thumb brushing absently against the carved crow’s beak, as though imagining tracing her smile, her lips, her dimples. As though he was committing something to memory.
"The wraith returns! How were the open seas? Did you meet Sturmhond? Oh, did you know he came to Ketterdam a month ago? He brought this cool looking sonar thing-It's for you!"
The distinctive Zemeni accent of a dark-skinned sharpshooter reached her ears before she reached the landing. He wore an eccentric mix of pink and lime green, his top hat askew as always, holsters at his hips.
She couldn't help but let a breath escape her, barely concealing her laughter with a sigh.
"Hi, Jesper. No, I haven't met Sturmhond, I mostly blew things up, and-"
A cool, flat, silver disk was thrust into her hands, Jesper still going on about Nikolai's alter ego-not that Inej would ever tell him, of course. Oddly enough, she didn't think he'd care.
And after all, some secrets were better kept between Dirtyhands and the Wraith.