Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Kaz opens his eyes in the meadow. Nothing has changed. Poppies bloom like drops of blood flung across the field. He reaches for one and examines it in his gloves. The petals bruise easily between his fingers. Kaz straightens and sets his sights elsewhere.

He is waiting. Kaz removes his time piece from his pocket but of course, it doesn’t tell the time here. He knows there are clock hands, but he can’t see them on the glass. Merely the impression of black and white and glass. The time is whatever he wants it to be, but his mind can’t conjure even the simplest minute. Kaz should pick something. Having time is better than no time, but he can already feel his attention shifting elsewhere.

Jordie has arrived. His smile wide as ever.

“You’re late,” he tells Kaz, already setting up a game of chess. Kaz blinks and there is a table in the field and Jordie is sitting, waiting for Kaz.

The problem with dreams is that they give you everything you want.

Kaz takes his seat. His mind presses, urges—take in the sight of Jordie’s face before he loses it forever, warn him of his fate, that he will disappear when Kaz does—but his eyes won’t focus. He knows this is Jordie. But all he can detect is the outline of dark hair and equally dark eyes, the same ones Kaz sees in the mirror each day.

Everyone used to tell them how alike they looked. This is Kaz’s work – his mind filling in the details, blending out the colours. He tries looking at Jordie’s nose. Tries tracing the shape of it, but there is nothing. Jordie is marble in water. Constantly moving.

Jordie plays first, because he always plays first; even though he and Kaz never dreamed of chess games when they were alive. They played with sticks made into swords, or rough-housed in the backyard, or raced each other down the long stretch of dirt that marked the way to their farmhouse. Jordie was fast where Kaz was small. There was never a guaranteed winner, depending on the game. Neither of them knew how to play chess. There was no one around to teach them.

Jordie moves his rook. Kaz shifts his pawn. The pieces feel real beneath his fingers. This, too, is fitting of Jordie. He liked dramatic ventures and rescues. He wanted to be the first to climb to the top of every tree in their town. Kaz beat him, not because Jordie was bad, but because Kaz was better. Kaz started from the ground and worked his way up. Jordie always wanted to skip branches. Eventually, he fell from the lower reaches and came close enough to breaking his ankle that their parents banned them both from climbing. Kaz wanted one final attempt before giving up. Jordie was on bed rest, forced to take his time, while Kaz scurried up the final tree when he should have been home for supper. Jordie was furious when he found out. He accused Kaz of cheating.

Is it cheating if you were never competing?

Jordie’s knight takes Kaz’s pawn. Kaz reaches for another piece, but his hands pause just as his fingertips brush the head of his bishop.

“Jordie,” he says, slowly so Jordie can hear and understand. “This is a dream.”

Jordie tilts his head, laughs boisterously, but there is no sound. Kaz cannot remember his brother’s laugh. He cannot remember his voice. The details are wrong because Kaz does not know enough to correct them. It is the same mistake every night.

“No, it’s not,” Jordie corrects. He uses Kaz’s captured pawn to wave to the poppies. “Look at the flowers, Kaz.”

But the flowers aren’t flowers. They are snakes, writhing in the grass with flashing red bellies. Kaz wants to shout. He tries jumping to his feet, but his legs are frozen. He has no cane—where is his cane? Where has it gone? —but there is no need for a cane when his leg is whole and unbroken, and Kaz’s mind screams: Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Wake up, Brekker.

He wants to stay a little longer. The snakes are moving toward them, but they aren’t snakes, really. Kaz knows what they are. Unwelcome intruders upon this moment.

“Jordie,” he tries again. “You have to stop gambling.”

Jordie laughs. Kaz doesn’t.

“Please,” Kaz says, and isn’t sure what he is begging for.

“One more,” Jesper’s voice pleads. “One more hand at Makker’s Wheel and I’ll stop, promise.”

The meadow is gone. They are in the Emerald Palace watching the wheel spin. Kaz sees Jordie’s face but hears Jesper’s voice. The two are merging more and more often in his dreams. Kaz doesn’t want to admit why.

“I’m going to lose you,” Kaz tells his brother. “I’m going to lose you because you won’t give up. Because you always get in over your head before I can drag you out.”

Jordie reaches over the table. His cards spill outwards and reveal his hand, but he doesn’t notice. His eyes deeper and darker than they ever were in real life. Kaz’s eyes in his brother’s head.

“How will you do that?” Jordie asks, voice soft and curious. “With your leg broken?”

Kaz’s hand shoots to his thigh. The pain is back – radiating in circles, blooming like a spider, like a meadow. Dread overcomes him. Someone’s voice booms and the crack of it—like lightning splitting the air—drives him back to reality.

Kaz’s dreams are the same every night. He has dreamed of Jordie and the meadow five times this week. He knows he should talk to someone. Maybe Nina. He should see if this is common, if this is normal, or if someone has been tinkering with his head.

But he can’t stomach the thought of asking. There are a million things wrong with Kaz and this is likely one of them. No amount of kruge can stop the dreams. But if they stop, then Kaz has no chance to talk to his brother. No chance to see his face.

Maybe one day, Kaz will remember his brother’s face and see it in the dream.

When their mother died, everyone told them that the grief would fade. That with years of distance behind them, they would be able to think of their mother without crying.

Kaz can’t remember ever crying over his mother. She was already gone by the time he was old enough to have memories of her. It was his father’s ghost that stayed with him. Blood in the grass and the field and the wheat. Blood on the ox’s feet. But he was young, and still did not fully understand death. He knew his father had gone away, the same way his mother had gone away. Kaz was nine. He cried mostly to copy Jordie, copy the emotions he thought he should feel. He was scared. Would they lose their home? Their land?

Jordie said otherwise, but then he sold their house and land anyway and dragged them to Ketterdam. Kaz didn’t grieve his father the way he thought a normal child should. He had Jordie. There was loss, but his world had not collapsed. His brother was the same. Gently helping Kaz through their mutual fog.

Kaz gets up. He has work and it cannot wait. Nothing can when it comes to the Dregs. They are an impatient sort, bolstered only by Kaz’s slow-burning resolve. He needs that of them. He needs people who are constantly ready to move at a moment’s notice, instead of people who stand around playing fifty questions before standing.

His cane thunks against the floorboards. Kaz frowns at it, temporarily disconcerted. His cane feels like part of him after eight years. It’s natural. But after the dream, its presence seems conspicuous. Kaz shakes off the thought and continues down the stairs. He heard that Nina recently arrived in Ketterdam. Kaz expects her presence any day now. Nina might try hiding herself from his Dregs, but she must know that Kaz is aware that she is in the city. As a former Dregs member herself, Nina would be avoiding the more obvious of the Dregs’ territories to forestall Kaz’s interference. He would applaud the effort if she hadn’t immediately booked a room in a motel bought under one of Kaz’s many aliases. Her time in Fjerda has dulled her, he thinks. Nina devolved from spy to soldier. The Little Palace is many things, but hardly the centre of espionage. Not outside Ravka, at least.

Kaz would be concerned over why Nina is taking so long to greet Kaz, but he also knows that she has found him particularly insufferable ever since the Ice Court job. She doesn’t blame him. He would have felt her blows by now if she did. But she doesn’t believe that he is innocent, either. Nina hasn’t stood in the way between Kaz and Inej—she would have, if she felt there was reason to—but there was flint in her eyes when she looked at Kaz. Before they parted ways.

Mostly, he thinks she blames herself for Matthias. Kaz is simply the easy target.

Pim is supposed to travel up to Kaz’s office. Kaz wants to be seen as powerful—to make people travel to him rather than the other way around—but he can’t afford to be seen as lazy. Resting on his laurels.

He cancels the meeting in his office and sends a runner to tell Pim that Kaz will meet him at the Crow Club. Pim was never the brightest bulb, but he’s keen, and handy in a fight. He also stalwartly backed Kaz when the time came to claim his throne. It’s why he made Pim and Annika his only lieutenants, if you exclude Jesper and Inej. His only active lieutenants.

Now that he has a meeting outside his office, Kaz has to get up for the day. He needs to find his coat, fix his tie, gather his materials. It hardly matters inside the Slat, where everyone knows him and fears him regardless of how he presents himself, but image is everything. Outside, he stops being Kaz. He becomes someone else entirely.

Kaz readies himself with the aid of his cane.

Business never stops. Kaz hadn’t expected it to after becoming the boss, but it still manages to catch him by surprise every time he has to shuffle through the monumental piles of paperwork it creates.

He was doing most of it for Haskell, anyway, but Kaz runs the Dregs differently than Haskell did. Kaz likes registering his business ventures. Making them legal, above board. It makes it much easier to run rings around the Merchant Council when they try dragging the Barrel into chaos, and much easier to push bribes into stadwatch hands when they get to maintain their illusion of a clean face.

It's easy to pretend that nothing is wrong when you are seated. Kaz fell asleep at his desk—again—and his face surely carries the marks. He checks that his basin is filled with water and splashes his face. Trying to wash away the last of the dream.

It’s fine. Nothing is wrong. A dream is simply the idle workings of a brain’s slumber, the delusions of an unconscious mind. Kaz’s brother is dead. He dreams of him because he misses him, because there is grief buried inside, and he will likely always dream of Jordie.

He hasn’t dreamed since Jordie died, but that is because of who Kaz is. What he has done. This bears no reflection.

Annika meets him for their morning brief. She spots him halfway across the floor of the Crow Club and her mouth briefly twists, no doubt expecting to find him in his office. Kaz ignores her. He was intending to meet with Pim first instead of Annika, but Pim seems to have disappeared on urgent business.

Her hair still bears last night’s braids in a crown around her head. She stands before his desk out of habit—Haskell never allowed them to sit during briefings, thought it a waste of time—and she pinches the bridge of her nose before shaking her head as though clearing it.

“Pim gone again?” Annika says as she approaches.

Kaz shrugs. “I’m told that his wife is extremely convincing in a pinch.”

Annika snorts. “More like she was tired of constantly being left with the baby while he talks to you at odd hours of the morning.”

He will deal with the transgression later. Pim has a wife now, and a child, and even Kaz Brekker isn’t so heartless as to make him disregard his family entirely. When Kaz went to claim his throne from Haskell, Pim was one of the few who stalwartly supported him. Kaz is hardly going to beat him bloody for one missed meeting.

But the Dregs must come first. Pim knows this. Your gang comes before everything else, or you die. Either at someone else’s hands, or your own gang’s. It is the only way to survive the Barrel.

Annika brings his attention back to their meeting. They have seated themselves at the back of the club where no one will be stupid enough to interrupt.

“Right,” she says. “Business. The Black Tips have basically rolled over, belly up, after Rollins went down and they haven’t resurfaced. Roeder has taken some of the spiders to make sure it’s for real and they aren’t just playing.”

Kaz hums. He suspected as much. Annika pauses, waiting, and Kaz inclines his head to indicate that she can proceed.

“The Razorgulls are another story.” Annika raises her palms and shrugs. “They’re not technically in Fifth Harbour, but they’re stationed just outside it. Waiting to follow pigeons to our establishments and robbing them as soon as they leave.”

It’s an elegant way of skirting the Dregs’ territory laws, but Kaz frowns. He’s a firm believer in following the letter of the law, not the spirit – if he were ever so inclined to acknowledge its existence. The Razorgulls are another story.

The streets of the Barrel are no one’s property. Not the main roads, anyway. What the Razorgulls have failed to acknowledge is that like Fifth Harbour, entire sections of the Barrel can fall under a gang’s jurisdiction, and they have deliberately stepped upon the Dregs’.

“Keep an eye on it,” Kaz instructs. “Send a message. Cease and desist. If they continue, I want to know immediately.”

“Got it, boss.” Annika’s hand drifts to her revolver. “I can’t imagine them enjoying the notice very much.”

“No.” Kaz smirks, thinking upon it with satisfaction. “I don’t imagine they will.”

It turns his attention to his own gang. Kaz hand-picked who he wanted from the old, but the new are sweeping in and mixing with them. Annika and Pim are as inscrutable as they were two years ago when Kaz took over, but Kaz brought with him only the most headstrong, ruthless swathe of the gang. He erased whatever softness remained. Now, it is catching up to him. Kaz knows there are members who look at his position and think it is a throne that can be stolen, bought, or forced. But Kaz is not a king. He is Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel, who did anything necessary to lead the Dregs and several things that were not.

Kaz feels comfortable in his ability to keep his Dregs at bay, but all it takes is one moment of weakness. One moment where he forgives a mistake he should not, or where he overlooks a family connection that ends with a knife buried in his gut.

The benefits of remaking a gang are immense. The younger generation have no memory of another leader. No conflicting loyalties. They do not know Per Haskell beyond rumours and fragments of old stories. They see Dirtyhands, the legend, but were not there for the making of it.

The new members have never known a world where Kaz Brekker did not lead the Dregs. The older ones do. But the young are those desperate to cut their teeth in a fight, to seize what is not theirs. They are the ones hungering for Kaz’s position.

He worries, constantly. But as much as he knows they are a threat; his true focus is the older Dregs. He weeded out those with any remaining sentiment for Haskell that day on the stairs, but Kaz isn’t infallible. He knows there must be some who are hiding from him. Waiting for the right moment to reveal their cards.

Kaz leans back in his chair. He wanted the security of the Crow Club for his meetings, because the Slat leeks rumours worse than a pipe that Jesper has unleashed himself upon, revolvers swinging. But it is convenient to conduct an inspection of the premises while he is here. Annika has sharp eyes. She isn’t afraid to pass on what she knows, and people often tell her things when Kaz is not in the room. Trying to commiserate with her over her miserable boss. Kaz won’t deny that he is unpleasant to work with and he is confident that Annika has her own moments of doubt, but she has never failed to express her misgivings rather than squirrelling away with disgruntled Dregs members at the back of the Slat.

Annika withdraws her papers. She places them in front of Kaz rather than directly handing him them. It’s more discrete in an obvious Dregs location where spies might frequent. Particularly ex-Dime Lions.

Kaz skims through the papers without visible reaction. He pauses on a particular section and looks up, waiting. Annika doesn’t require prompting.

“It’s the Merchant Council,” she says, calm as ever. “Those new trade embargoes are finally going through.”

The papers must have come from Roeder. None of Kaz’ newer Spiders have attempted to spy on the Merchant Council. He is still breaking them of their fear of authority. But Roeder has been in Ketterdam long enough to have abandoned such notions.

Kaz didn’t ask Roeder to spy on the Merchant Council. He gave orders to keep tabs on the main members before Inej left, when Jan Van Eck was still one of their biggest problems. Roeder continued because Kaz never redirected him. This is what proper training does. He is growing impatient, waiting for his Spiders to spin their own webs over Ketterdam. But such things take time. The youngest of his Spiders is only nine.

He pockets the papers and nods at Annika in thanks.

“Tell me if the Merchant Council makes contact with the Tidemakers,” he instructs. He doesn’t give Annika help. She tilts her head, frowning as she considers how to keep herself in line with Kaz’s orders. Annika finally nods.

“Are we dealing with Zenik?” she asks instead. “I heard she’s looking for something in the Barrel.”

Kaz shrugs. “She won’t find it. Leave her alone unless she starts drawing too much attention to our business.”

“Alright, Kaz.” Annika looks up as their waitress arrives with a fresh pot of coffee. Kaz waits to see if the girl will acknowledge them, but her expression is neutral beyond a polite smile. His hiring policies have paid off.

Annika pours mugs for both of them. She adds milk and sugar to her own but leaves Kaz’s black. He doesn’t comment as she slides the mug to him. Two years of working together has bred familiarity. Kaz should knock her down, soon, but there is no point to humiliating his lieutenant. She isn’t interested in him. She simply knows him. As much as any of his Dregs can.

Nina being in the city was a problem, but now she has crawled into the Barrel. He had hoped that she was exploring Ketterdam. The Dregs hotel where she booked into was at the outskirts of the Barrel, nearly in the Stave. Now Annika has confirmed that Zenik is digging into the business of the Barrel gangs. Maybe Nina thinks that Kaz will try and warn her off her mission. Or maybe she thinks that he will sell information on her location for profit. Both reasonable fears, Kaz would admit if asked. Nina Zenik is dead—or missing—to the world, while Mila Jandersat is supposed to be Crown Princess of Fjerda. She must be wearing her old face, or a close enough approximation to be recognised. Perhaps preying on old connections from her time as an indenture in Ketterdam.

Time will tell. Kaz knows exactly why Nina is in the Barrel, and he has no intentions of helping. Not unless she comes to him.

Kaz drinks his coffee without caring about the temperature. He stands without gesturing for Annika to follow. She does anyway.

The morning has dawned and brought new light, but the rough work never stops. Dirtyhands has business to conduct.

Business, business, business.

Kaz feels like a mouse caught in a cheesetrap; endlessly chasing.

It ends when he ends.

Wylan’s visit is surprising. Kaz wipes the blood from his neck with a handkerchief and tucks it into his pocket.

“What business?” he greets Wylan coolly.

Kaz is confident that there is nothing suspicious lying around his office. Kaz is always careful about concealing evidence of his business. But unexpectedly seeing Wylan at the Slat makes his skin itch. Paranoia prickles at the back of his neck. Mixing with the blood.

Wylan scurries to stand from his seat. He isn’t afraid of Kaz the way he used to be. He stands tall and confident in greeting Kaz, but his hands flutter around his thighs.

“No business,” Wylan says. “Well, nothing much. Just the Merchant Council being idiots, but you knew that already.”

He did, but Kaz refuses to respond. It is hardly a coincidence that the latest set of trade embargoes happened to affect only Wylan Van Eck, despite the members of the council having their fingers in virtually every pie that could possibly bring them money. Kaz smells a rat. They weren’t going after Wylan but impacted him anyway.

Kaz sits without waiting for Wylan, who takes it for permission to sit. He smiles at Kaz.

“It’s nice to see you,” Wylan says, seemingly genuine. “It’s been hard to talk with people now that I’m on the Merchant Council and Jesper is… well.”

“Retired,” Kaz contributes smarmily. He flips open his account book and begins tallying the columns in his head.

Wylan fiddles with something in his hands. Kaz doesn’t need to look up to know that is likely something from one of Wylan’s latest projects.

“Yes,” Wylan agrees. “Retired. From all this, you know. I just thought you might want to know that he’s doing well. He actually enjoys being at the university. And things are going well for me, too.”

Kaz rolls his eyes. “Does this really concern me?”

Wylan’s eyes crinkle. “We’re friends, even if you won’t admit it.”

They aren’t, but Kaz doesn’t push the point. Kaz Brekker doesn’t have friends. He just has Crows – and all of them left. He can’t resent them for it when he was the one who handed them the money and the tools, but he can’t quite forget.

Eventually, Wylan sighs.

“You could write, Kaz. Or visit.”

“I do.”

“More, I mean. You don’t have to sequester yourself in the Slat and the Crow Club all the time. I’m not exactly dying to hear from you, but it’s nice to know that you’re alive, at least.”

Kaz ignores this. He writes to Inej, and drops by the Van Eck mansion on occasion, and that is enough. It is more than what he needs.

“Haven’t you heard?” Kaz looks up, mouth twisted in amusement. “I’m the Bastard of the Barrel. I drink the blood of children and can’t stand sunlight.”

Wylan snorts. He sounds shockingly like Jesper. “I’d believe the last one. I don’t think I’ve ever willingly seen you in the daylight except on a job.”

“And you never will.”

Because Wylan shows no signs of addressing why he came but seems intent on sitting in Kaz’s office for the foreseeable future, Kaz hands him a bookkeeping report.

“Count this for me,” he orders Wylan. “See if the amount of alcohol we purchased matches with the alleged profit. If you’re going to sit here bothering me, you might as well be useful.”

Wylan momentarily frowns, then opens the book and realises it is nearly entirely numbers. His face relaxes. Kaz still does the bookkeeping for the Dregs because he doesn’t trust anyone else and writing down exactly what their purchases mean has never sat right with him. So the books are filled with nothing but dates and totals.

Kaz raises a hand for silence when it looks like Wylan might comment. Thankfully, Wylan shuts up. Kaz’s hand taps the surface of the tax report from Fifth Harbour, and he thinks of his next move.

Kaz knows it’s a bad idea, but he returns to the meadow in his dreams.

He still can’t make out Jordie’s face. It’s like someone moulded a clay model of Kaz entirely from memory. It’s him, but not quite. It’s Jordie, but not quite.

Jordie hands him the chess board. It is Kaz’s turn to set up the pieces. For a moment, he considers placing the black before Jordie and the white in front of himself, just to see what happens. The thought passes and he leaves the white pieces for Jordie. His brother plays first. This is their routine.

They make it halfway through their chess game before Kaz begins slipping in and out. He places his hand against his head.

“Focus,” Jordie says. “Don’t let go, Kaz.”

Kaz looks up and the sky is water. His mother died long before he was old enough to miss her presence, but she used to keep a pond at the back of their property. She planted water lilies that a friend procured from Shu Han as a wedding gift. He sees them now, but the colours are wrong. They were never red. The pond grew algae without his mother’s care and choked out the water lilies, completing their assassination mission when Kaz was six, but Kaz looks at the water and sees, impossibly, the red blooming lilies.

His head hurts. Panic seizes his chest. Kaz finds himself sitting in a boat with Jordie, the chess board nestled between them on the floor. The boat is rocking on the water, but the chess board never moves. Kaz tries picturing the pieces falling. They refuse to move. He strains himself, wondering where the wind is coming from to make the boat rock, but the wind is absent. Everything is gone.

Jordie plays his next move. He looks at Kaz and frowns.

“It’s your turn,” he reminds Kaz.

Kaz plays his move. It’s stupid, this dream. He knows it’s a dream now, in a way he didn’t at first, the knowledge creating pressure at the back of his head. Kaz has become aware.

What a dull dream, he thinks. This is the best his subconscious mind could produce? Chess games with his dead brother?

Then Jordie captures Kaz’s king, and his attention returns to the game. He studies the board. Jordie almost has him in checkmate position, but that will never happen because they have never reached the end of their game; the same way that Jordie will never reach thirteen, and Kaz’s leg will never heal.

They are in the meadow again. Still sitting in the boat. Kaz wants to lean over the side and pick a flower—Inej likes flowers, geraniums, she likes geranums—but he can’t reach. The flowers evade capture.

He reaches and reaches and reaches but he never picks the flower, just as Jordie never plays his final move.

He doesn’t eat breakfast. The Razorgulls are encroaching on Fifth Harbour, again. Kaz’s spiders brought morsels of information suggesting that there was an uprising against their leader merely two weeks prior. It was Kaz’s youngest spider that brought the crown jewel to him. Nine-years-old and Barrel-born to Ravkan parents before they were killed in a carriage accident, the boy had the courage to slip inside the Razorgulls’ own bar and find their new leader. If Kaz trusts the information—which he does, having verified it both personally and with Specht’s ears—then the Razorgulls are now headed by a woman with an outrageous temper and an even more outrageous desire to force the Dregs from Fifth Harbour.

Kaz persuaded Haskell to make the purchase. He oversaw the dredging and construction of the old harbour, then the hiring of workers to keep it functioning as part of the wider port. Fifth Harbour belongs to Kaz Brekker. He resurrected it with bloody hands. The issue is that everyone—inside and out—knows that Fifth Harbour is the Dregs’ most profitable enterprise.

He admires their leader’s mettle in setting her eyes on the acquisition. Unfortunately for the Razorgulls, Kaz has no intentions of forgiving them for the slight.

“Organise a parlay,” he tells Pim once the lieutenant arrives in his office, Kaz’s gloves firmly on his hands. “I want our biggest bruisers.”

He has elected to momentarily overlook Pim’s missed meeting from the morning. Pim was sheepish when he first entered Kaz’s office, but also stiff, clearly expecting a scolding at best and a beating at worst. Luckily for him, Kaz understands that it is not in the Dregs’ best interest if their boss begins assaulting his lieutenants.

Pim understands he was wrong. That is what is important.

“Are we bringing in Fahey, boss?” Pim rocks on his heels, already preparing for action. His face turns serious. “We’ve got enough firepower already, but if you say we need him then we’ll get him. I will.”

“No.” Kaz sets his pen down. “We won’t need him.”

Wylan in his office: telling him how well Jesper is doing in university. Wylan isn’t a good liar. He would never succeed at a con. But he has learned how to phrase things to suggest without revealing. Wylan doesn’t refuse Kaz when he asks for Wylan to join on a job. He still enjoys tinkering in the Barrel, more than he does with the Merchant Council. But Wylan has made his stance clear on Kaz needlessly dragging in Jesper.

Fine. Kaz will keep Jesper out.

He checks his pocket watch. Pim always organises parlays in the same timeframes unless otherwise instructed. Kaz should break him of the habit, but it serves for now. Inej returns in two weeks. Kaz needs to deal with his business so he can greet Inej without distraction.

Worse, he doesn’t need Nina dragging Inej into her investigation. He knows the two are close. Their friendship wavered after Matthias’s death—again, Nina hating everyone for their involvement in the job that killed Matthias, but mostly blaming herself—but did not break. They stayed in contact long after Nina’s letters stopped coming to Ketterdam.

Kaz has a bundle of letters from Inej tied with blue ribbon sitting on his desk. She sent the ribbon without explanation. Kaz kept it because he couldn’t bring himself to hand it away as she no doubt intended. It has been months since Inej’s last visit. She keeps busy at sea, but Kaz wishes there was more business that brought her close to Ketterdam.

While Pim is organising the parlay, Kaz tracks down his second-best spider. Her eyes are moon-round when she appears to spot Kaz, but he knows that she must have heard him approaching well before he came into view.

“What business?’ she greets, startlingly serious for a girl of twelve years.

Kaz places a coin pouch on the table. She eyes it curiously.

“A bonus,” he says. “If you can do a job in half the time.”

“I’ll do it in a quarter,” his spider promises, confident but not arrogant. She reminds him of Inej, sometimes. Then her chin tilts down and the resemblance is gone.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Kaz warns, but hands her the coin pouch. “Keep an eye on our friend at The Bell. I want to know what clients they are taking, and when, and where. If anything changes you are to alert me immediately. Is this understood?”

His spider nods. Kaz is paranoid about everything, but rarely about his spiders. No one is as good as Inej. She is irreplaceable. But his new spiders—Dael the youngest, Aleen the second eldest, and Lang the oldest at sixteen—grow more by the day. They are not so good that Kaz cannot track them if they betray him, but they are good enough to know firstly that betraying Kaz will not end well, and secondly that they will gain more by staying with the Dregs than by leaving or selling his secrets.

Aleen takes the money and disappears. Kaz doesn’t waste time wondering if she understood. He already knows.

The night of the parlay arrives along with a letter from Nina.

I know you can help, the letter reads. I won’t waste time asking. What do you know, Kaz?

He sets it to the side of his desk and tucks a knife into his vest. Guns, knives. Kaz can use both but prefers his cane and fists. Still, he isn’t stupid enough to attend a parlay without preparing options. Not with a new opponent on the ground.

Kaz doesn’t brawl as frequently as he used to. Since taking over the Dregs, he has run the gang with ruthless efficiency. Everyone knows not to cross Dirtyhands. He is rarely required to intervene. But he needs to prove that he earned that name for a reason, and that he has not grown soft around the middle like Haskell did. Resting on his laurels.

He tugs his gloves further over his wrists, the familiar anticipation of a fight sending adrenaline flooding through him.

“It’s time,” he says to Annika, who appeared in his doorway. “Get your things.”

The Razorgulls are out in full force. Annika looks sideways at Kaz, who ignores the glance.

“Boss,” she says, and ends her sentence there.

“I know.” Kaz shifts his cane into his left hand. “We prepared.”

He doesn’t look up, or around. Annika notices his deliberate inattention and a smile tugs at her lips, quelled before it can truly spread and give the game away.

“I see,” she says, and he trusts that she does. They have been working together for long enough that it would be disappointing otherwise.

Kaz quickly scans the Razorgulls, generously having settled into rows that makes it almost suspiciously easy for Kaz to rack up the numbers in his head. Their leader is absent. He can tell from the way that the Razorgulls are firm, but ever-so-slightly edgy. They have no direction. Not yet.

The Dregs should really take offence. Formal offence, considering that Kaz strategically scheduled for the Dregs to arrive a quarter past the designated meeting time, and the Razorgulls’ new leader has still not arrived.

Parlays are about power, and the Razorgulls are determined to come out on top. Kaz shifts his cane into the opposite hand. He will get the last laugh. He always does.

Kaz has his pocket-watch in his waistcoat. He does not check the time.

“Annika,” he says without looking at her. “If the Razorgulls haven’t arrived by half-past twelve bells, see to it that their business is inspected. I rather think it time for the stadwatch to do their jobs, don’t you?”

His voice is loud—too loud for the streets of the Barrel, where even mice whisper and muffle their steps—carrying his words to the Razorgulls.

“Of course, boss,” Annika responds immediately, with identically deliberate volume.

Kaz fixes his gaze on the Razorgulls. Directly in the centre of their ranks. The reputation of Dirtyhands got them the parlay, is carrying the meeting on rivers of blood, and he does not need support in intimidating them. If they are wise.

But Annika is his lieutenant, and like a good lieutenant she stands a breath behind him and a careful step to the right. Showing her hand. He does not need her support, but her glare is black and foul as she forcefully locks eye contact with her mirror on the other side.

Interesting. The leader of the Razorgulls sent her lieutenant—presumably her second, for this parlay—but chose to arrive after him.

The Dregs sent the invitation to parlay, which means they set the ground rules. By accepting the invite, the Razorgulls also accepted the rules. Yet they broke etiquette and mailed back a list of their own demands.

Come alone, Maaike said in her response. No weapons. The old-fashioned way.

It seems that she is not so keen on the old-fashioned way herself.

Kaz spots a slight ripple spreading through the back ranks of the Razorgulls, and he smirks to himself. The illustrious leader has arrived.

The nature of the Barrel’s gangs is such that they collapse upon themselves like dying stars and reforge themselves within the year. Kaz’s first experience with them was when he was twelve and jumped by young Razorgulls in an alleyway, searching for his (ill-gotten) earnings of the week. It left him with bruises on his hip that didn’t heal for weeks because of continual jarring, and Kaz’s own refusal to rest. Two years later, he was holding parlays with the other lieutenants from the Razorgulls, with Kaz representing the Dregs.

Shame. He doesn’t see any of them here, which means that they have been disposed of, switched gangs, or have decided to side against the new leader’s faction.

Kaz has been running the game for ten years now. He has met with every leader of every gang in the Barrel, and then some. He has seen generations rise and fall within years, months, weeks. He has learned to tell who will last and who will not.

The new leader gliding her way to the front, a pistol holster obnoxiously obvious against her hip, is a flip of the coin. Friend or foe? Threat or nobody?

Kaz lifts his chin up. “I would call it a pleasure, but I’m afraid I would be lying.”

She shrugs, spreading her arms with a certain Jesper-like flair.

“We both know you’re far from being an honest man, Brekker. I presume you’re familiar with me?”

He both is and isn’t. Familiar in the sense that he understands what her aims for the parlay are and why she accepted, un-familiar in the sense that Aleen, frustratingly, was unable to capture her name and origins. Someone must have known that Kaz would send his new spiders. Otherwise, the Razorgulls can count themselves extraordinarily, infuriatingly lucky.

Kaz spins his cane in his hands. He leans forward mockingly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He spots the exact moment her temper flares. Her eyes abruptly sharpen, and she pushes back her coat with a quick flick of her fingers. The similarity to Jesper is distracting, throwing him off. Kaz almost wonders if it was deliberate.

Her lieutenant is just as quick to tap the back of the leader’s shoulder, shaking her head with an obvious glance towards Kaz.

Dirtyhands, he reads on her lips before the lieutenant turns her face away to prevent such a thing. Don’t… you think you know him, but… Pekka Roll-….

They are still standing a careful field of distance apart.

The leader turns back, her lips pursed.

“My name is Maaike,” she says with considerably less cheer, a forced quality to her voice. “I control the Razorgulls.”

Kaz thinks of the behaviour he saw from her Razorgulls before she arrived, and sincerely doubts this. He gestures casually towards her coat.

“I see the old-fashioned way doesn’t suit you.” Kaz usually would never point it out this brazenly, but it serves a point.

Everyone brings weapons to a parlay. No one is so stupid as to come defenceless. The point is to hide your weapons until the very last moment, thus preserving the illusion of peace.

Parlay,

Maaike cocks her head. “You brought a weapon, too. I’m only playing fair.”

Weapon, singular. Quaint, Kaz thinks. She has betrayed her inexperience.

Maaike doesn’t trust that he isn’t faking the limp to get one over her. She also believes that the rest of his weapons are with his lieutenants. Funny, the assumptions people make. Everyone believes that others are fundamentally like them. If Kaz were to look, he is now confident that besides the gun, she has given several of her knives and other items to the woman on her right. Her own lieutenant.

Kaz does not betray his realisation. He shrugs and spreads his hands harmlessly.

“Who would deny a cripple his cane?”

“A late cripple.”

“You understand, the Barrel streets are not designed for canes.”

Maaike’s expression finally begins to sharpen, and bloody.

“No,” she says with deliberate emphasis. “They aren’t.”

Behind her, Kaz notices her lieutenant reaching slowly underneath her coat for what must be a concealed pistol. The lieutenant’s eyes are—stupidly, never give away your tells—fixed upon a young member of the Dregs, standing to the far right where he is isolated, obvious, and a target.

Kaz instantly understands what is about to happen, and he is abruptly tired of trying to forge a truce with the Razorgulls. Anger roils through him. Wait, Kaz reminds himself.  

“Forty percent,” he declares suddenly, his voice echoing like a thundercrack through the pavement. “Pay forty percent of all profits gathered from your… use…. of Fifth Harbour or get out.”

Maaike blinks at him. Her lips curl downwards.

“Hardly a fair deal, is it Brekker?” she says amusedly, her finger tapping at her own holster.

“It’s the only deal I’ll give you, and the only chance.”

The Razorgulls are an old Barrel gang, full of sharp wits and sharper tongues. But their leader was stupid. She removed the old generation and replaced it with a new guard, a young guard, the same way that Kaz did but with none of his preparation.

She doesn’t understand what is happening right in front of her—what has already happened—and none of the members she brought are experienced enough to know the difference.

“The way I see it?” Maaike rolls her eyes, idle and proud. “I’ve already won over you, Dirtyhands. You didn’t notice us directing the pigeons, did you? Bringing them to our dens, our alleys? I don’t need you to give us a chance, or some horrendous deal you are offering to save face. We’ve already taken over.”

Her lieutenant takes aim.

Kaz brings down his cane, and the world explodes into motion.

The idiots didn’t do their research. Annika isn’t his only lieutenant. Kaz has Pim, laying in wait on the rooftops with two Dregs; rifles tucked under their arms. Several Razorgulls topple. Kaz lets a vicious snarl curl across his face and he leaves Annika to her own devices, raising his cane over the head of a Razorgull running towards them with the fires of Ghezen. Crack, and he’s down.

Never Kaz. Not since he was fourteen.

There is something in the air; heavy and earthy, settling upon them like smog, like peat. Kaz watches it settle around them and does not know what it is. He doesn’t have time to care – not with another Razorgull approaching, gun at the ready and steel about his face.

Kaz throws himself to the ground as the first bullet cracks through the air. He rolls over and sweeps his cane towards his assailant’s feet, trying to catch him off guard. He stumbles but does not fall. Kaz takes the opportunity to remove his own gun and shoot the Razorgull in the chest, and he finally stops, staggers, and curls inwards before collapsing.

Curious, the way men die.

The smoke is growing thicker. Smoke? Smog? Someone else’s concoction? Kaz takes the gun from the dead man’s body and tucks it into his waistcoat, pushing off the ground with his cane. The battle is only half-won.

Silver flashes in his peripheral and Kaz turns in time to block a knife to the face. He’s on the defence, forced backwards with the force of the blow, his bad leg dragging beside him as Kaz tries to hold his ground. Both hands occupied. He can’t reach for his knife or gun.

Annika blows past Kaz, engaged in her own furious battle with a Razorgull. There is blood on her face. She doesn’t seem overly concerned about her fight, but she looks backward and spots Kaz. Annika’s eyes widen. Instantly, she guts the Razorgull and raises her gun, preparing to shoot Kaz’s opponent, but they are moving too much. She can’t get a clear shot and they both know it. Kaz’s cane is moving closer and closer to his own face and the silver knife is moving dangerously, close to cutting him, but the Razorgull wavers for the briefest of seconds with fatigue and Kaz finally pushes him off.

Bang!

Kaz locks eyes with Annika over the explosion of blood. She shakes her head. Not her. Kaz turns over his shoulder and spots a Razorgull falling, a knife leaving their hands on the way down. Annika took care of that threat, not the one before them.

Kaz moves closer curiously. There is a knife protruding from the dead Razorgulls’ head, hence the abrupt shower of blood. Kaz recognises the handle. He instinctively looks towards the rooftops, feeling his heart pulse in his chest. Squeezing desperately. How-? 

No, it isn’t important. He forces himself to switch focus. Pim on the roof but rapidly descending, having run out of ammunition, and Annika on the ground swinging around her guns. She is making her way back to him, determined to follow formation. Pim must be moving towards Kaz, too.

Kaz breathes and tries to think. He can’t see Maaike. The air – something is wrong with the air. Stupid, Kaz.

He whirls over his shoulder. “Don’t come down!” he barks to Pim, who falters on the fire escape.

No time to explain. Kaz sweeps his eyes over their surroundings. Maaike nowhere to be found. Uncharacteristic for her, from what Kaz has been led to believe. Evidently, she has deigned herself above dealing with the Dregs, either out of arrogance or fear.

Kaz rips off part of his sleeve and forces it over his mouth and nose. They need to end this now, before the mysterious smog starts doing real damage. The smog has not yet settled heavily enough to obscure their vision, so Kaz leans heavily on his cane using his elbow and raises his free hand to signal to his Dregs.

Take them out.

He watches stonily. The Dregs were already fighting well—how could they not? –but now Dirtyhands has given a command, an indictment. Words are unnecessary. His Dregs surge around him, twice the vigour and energy poured into every movement.

Win, or don’t bother coming back. Kaz impresses this upon them with a single glance. Then he picks himself up and sets off to find Maaike.

The smog is thickest from the right corner of their little parlay square. Kaz suspects it a mixture of having a skilled chemist—obvious, seeing as Kaz had one of those himself, before Wylan went clean—and a Squaller. He knows for certain that the Razorgulls have never had a Grisha in their employ. Maaike is smarter than she seems, to have found one in Ketterdam and secured them before anyone else could discern the Grisha’s presence.

Kaz needs to move quickly, but he doesn’t hurry. Maaike wouldn’t risk taking out her own people. It must be slow-acting, whatever they put in the smog. They likely hoped to cause enough confusion to disorient the Dregs, dulling their sharp edges. Maaike wanted an advantage, not a game-stopper. Still, Kaz knows that the second Maaike realises she is losing, she will pull the plug and take them all out for whatever damage it will do.

Shadows on the roof. Not Pim, not Razorgulls. Kaz knows she will follow him. This is what they do—what they did—before Inej took to the seas.

Kaz descends into the dark. He swings his cane at the nearest mass he can find and is instantly greeted with a satisfying thump. His aim was a little low, then, but it doesn’t matter when a pale flash of skin alerts him to Maaike’s presence all the same.

No gun; too dangerous for the environment. Kaz keeps his cloth over his mouth and swings his cane up once more, pushing heavily downward into his good leg to keep himself balanced. Maaike easily dodges. The smog hasn’t dissipated, so Kaz clearly didn’t hit the Squaller. Shame. But it is coming thinner, now, like the Squaller is distracted. Kaz puts money on the idea that the new lieutenant shadowing Maaike is her pet Squaller.

Maaike thrusts forward. Knife, dancing around them. Kaz can’t see her clearly but they both stand out in the gloom, pale as they are. White bellies exposed. Kaz pulls the cloth more fully over his mouth to try and hide what he can. He steps back from Maaike’s thrust and whips his cane to the side, but Maaike is prepared and parries. He hears a quiet pop! like she injured something in her wrist, which bears well for Kaz.

Not well enough. Before he can react, the smog suddenly forms around Kaz. The makeshift cloth isn’t enough. He is coughing, dragging air through his lungs. It burns on entry. They added more—sedative? Narcotic? —and Kaz’s lungs are suffering for it. The Razorgulls have decided to end things.

Kaz is forced to his knees, one hand on his throat and the other still firmly over the handle of his cane.

Unfortunately for the Razorgulls, the Wraith thrives in the dark and the dangerous. She appears in their midst, head cocked to the side and knives already meeting their targets. The Squaller howls in pain. Instantly, the smog begins to clear and Kaz can breathe a little easier. He picks himself up on unsteady feet and watches the Wraith at work.

She doesn’t kill. Not unless necessary. The Squaller screaming means she has air left to scream with. The Wraith’s bone-handled knife finds itself firmly driven into Maaike’s shoulder, and to Maaike’s credit she stumbles but does not retreat. She snarls and fumbles for her gun, but the Wraith is swift, kicking it from Maaike’s hand and sending it skittering across the pavement.

Inej turns to look at Kaz. Her expression is unreadable.

Before the last of the smog can clear, Inej has vanished once more, leaving no trace of her presence bar the knives embedded in the bodies of Razorgulls. She knows Kaz will bring them back to her. He looks to the rooftops, sensing her presence fade. The idea of leaving Inej’s knives to be buried with low-life thugs is appalling. He will always rescue her knives, and she will always trust him with them where she cannot retrieve them herself.

He still doesn’t like the weight of it – the expectation that he will do the right thing, like Kaz is someone to be trusted. Yet he dutifully kneels and pulls Sankta Anastasia from the Squaller’s shoulder, whose howling doubles in volume. She tries swiping at him with the handle of her gun and Kaz simply breaks her wrist. He steps around her and finds Maaike.

“The knife, if you please,” he says.

Her face is bloodless. There is red on her teeth when she bares them at him.

“You haven’t won,” Maaike spits at him. “We’re not leaving.”

Kaz spins his cane in his hands. He shrugs. “Then you will be removed. This was over the second you drew your weapon, I’m afraid. Now I am going to take back mine.”

Maaike realises his intentions and pulls it from her shoulder before he can take more than a step toward her, throwing it at his feet. Her eyes are wary. The other lieutenants finally make their way toward her, pulling her away.

The Razorgulls abandon post.

Kaz suspects that they have left their dead without a care, and this suspicion is confirmed when he turns over his shoulder. It is easy to find the first Razorgull that Inej killed for him. He removes the handle from the body’s head.

What surprises him is the handle. Inej threw Sankta Alina for him. The one given to Inej by the saint herself.

Inej has been gone for nearly a full year, and it is high time they caught up.