Today I’m imagining Kaz recruiting Inej to pose as a student at Ketterdam University for a week–
The mark is a shady mercher with more than a few paper trails connecting him to Tante Heleen’s line of work. Kaz has devised a plan to take him down through the careful manipulations of his insufferably pompous nineteen-year-old son, who is attending university (courtesy of his father’s kruge, of course) as a prerequisite to taking over the family business.
He can’t send Jesper, who might be recognized at the university, or Wylan, who’s busy working a half-dozen shared schemes with Kaz against the Merchant Council, so he asks Inej to step in instead–
(And if the promise of toppling what’s left of Heleen’s crumbling system of indentures isn’t really the thing that motivates her so much as the chance to stay docked in Ketterdam for an extra week, spying and scheming for Kaz once more, all the while chipping away at the barriers between them, moving ever-closer to this once untouchable boy–well, she doesn’t have to say any of that to him when she agrees to take the job.)
(And if Kaz is loathe to admit that he could have asked any one of a dozen other Dregs to perform this role…well, these days he’s at least self-aware enough to recognize his own incurable weakness when it comes to the spider-turned-sailor next to him: He has never trusted anybody the way he has come to trust Inej.)
Inej has been tracing the mercher’s son through all of his classes, gathering information and planting a series of documents and nasty rumors that, at a flick of Kaz’s magician’s wrist, will bring the house of cards they’ve carefully built out of the mercher’s resources and reputation toppling in a matter of days.
The great inconvenience to this work, though, is that Inej has to actually appear to be a university student for these few days: attending classes, befriending bright-eyed students lingering near Speaker’s Bridge, hauling piles of textbooks through the Boeksplein,
and, yes, completing her homework.
But if she has to suffer through this misery, she’s determined to make Kaz suffer too–
Which is how they end up sitting side-by-side at the dining room table of the Van Eck mansion, open books, scattered papers, and half-dried inks splayed out before them.
Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve been at this for hours, moon high in the window above them, and Kaz’s brain has turned half to rot–or maybe, as he might blame it later, some lingering fumes from one or another of Wylan’s chemistry experiment have addled his senses temporarily; either way, he can’t help waxing nostalgic for just a moment with Inej sitting so peaceably at his side:
“You know, if we were two normal eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, this is probably how we would have met.”
She has to blink for a few seconds, her eyes dry from minutes glaring at the same page of Kerch Politiek, before she catches his sideways glance over the puffed-up philosophy treatise he’s referencing for an essay–she’d given trying to decipher that one hours ago. “Oh?” she prompts. Go on.
“In some study group or another in university. Solving problem sets instead of cracking safes, pilfering snacks from the café instead of stealing from literal slavers.” His tone is nonchalant, but there’s something almost like yearning behind his eyes as they stare determinedly toward the center of the table.
(She wants to ease that yearning, wants to reach across the inches between them that feel like fathoms. She knows too well that it’s not just their shared history of impossible odds and daring escapes that keeps them from the simpler life he imagines; it’s all the broken pieces of his past that he has only half-revealed to her in fleeting moments of courage, pieces she can’t put back together for him, even if she’s promised to keep reaching through them. All she can do, in this moment, is indulge in the fantasy.)
“Please, Kaz. That would never happen.”
The indignation in her voice draws his gaze back to her face, where her eyebrows are raised in amusement. “You might have gone to university to read these Saints-forsaken textbooks and freeload off Wylan Van Eck’s good will, but I would never have stopped performing with my family. We’d only meet after my troupe came to perform to the university students.”
There’s something gentle and knowing in her grin as she envisions it. “You’d be so obsessed with trying to figure out how I made all my tricks work, you wouldn’t be able to help following after me as we packed up the venue. That’s when we would meet–not at any of those awful coffee shops off the Boeksplein like two love-drunk pigeons ready for the plucking.”
His gaze is far-off now; she watches him imagining the scene she’s set before him. She thinks he’s nearly lost in the false memory, but one particular word does seem to pique his attention through the fog:
(His smirk is far too self-satisfied, but she can’t help the flaming blush that erupts on her cheeks.)
“We would never look so foolish, of course.”
“Of course,” he teases, the weightiness of the moment lifted, yet something almost melancholic lingers behind his easy grin. It’s a look she rarely sees him wear, insistent as he is on burying his true feelings beneath thick layers of armor. But Inej has always been good at sneaking into even the most impenetrable fortresses–and if Kaz has taught her anything, it’s the art of the impossible heist.
Maybe she’ll dive into that feeling with him later on, but for now, she has four classes’ worth of schoolwork to finish before the morning, and she needs his focus back on the books. She grabs one of the leftover textbooks within her reach and holds it up toward him, clearing her throat. “You might have some skill accounting for a gambling club, but let’s see how well you handle… Basic Accounting for the Prudent Wife.”
He snorts at that, picking the book up disdainfully by its spine. “They’ve devised an entirely different system of accounting for women?”
Inej’s grin is sharp. “I suppose you’re about to find that out for me.”
If they spend the rest of the night hand-in-hand below the table, a fraction of each of their minds cast toward an imaginary first date (where Inej demonstrates how she flips weightlessly across a high wire, Kaz shows off the card tricks he practices between business classes, and the two of them are certain that in any version of history, they would be drawn to each other the way the crows are drawn to the Slat’s attic window)–
Well, they don’t have to say it to know it’s true.
