𝙙𝙖𝙢𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙙𝙚𝙚𝙥.

wraith   crowned   captain,   INEJ   GHAFA   returns   to   kerch   on   the   heels   of   the   fjerdan   fleet.   the   prodigal   spider,   once   an   investment   herself,   racked   her   lessons   on   duty   &   debt.   under   the   spectre   of   war,   it's   startling   to   understand   how   deeply   the   crows   are   blood-bound,   too   entwined   to   leave   behind.   were   they   not   forged   in   the   same   crucible,   once   long   ago   ?   her   crew   followed,   but   the   seas   cannot   quiet   each   thirst.   there   is   something   rotten   in   ketterdam,   begging   to   be   seen.   for   the   first   time,   it's   not   just   brekker's   ego.   danger   covers   the   barrel   like   a   hand   on   the   throat   of   the   world.

━━     ❛❛    full  bio. ━━     ❛❛    skeleton. ━━     ❛❛    pinterest. ━━     ❛❛    playlist.

NINA:

nina sent inej off with muted saint’s blessings and prayers, although she knew the pleas of a half-believer carried only half as much weight as inej’s own. the saints knew their followers. the saints could peer into your soul and undress everything you sought to cloak. the saints knew inej was one of their own, willowy witch practicing miracles few could master. the saints would keep her in the crook of their arms, safe. just a few guards, she told herself, steely. but after today…just a few felt almost impossible.

with inej off to the wind, nina focused her attention on the tidemaker at her side. “there’s time to say a quick prayer to djel you know.” she teased, a faint pang of guilt ricocheting through her at her exploitation of the situation. pulling down her corset to reveal the curve of her chest, she paused at the entrance, just out of sight. “inej said there are three in the parlour. bet you ten kruge i can take down my guard faster than you. winner gets to take down the third. and bragging rights, of course.” hand on the door, she shot a final glance back at manu. “please don’t pick out anything stale.” her nose wrinkled at the thought. nina winked. “we’ve suffered enough today.”

playing to her strengths, nina threw open the door and bustled in, expression the picture of pain. “oh thank ghezen!” she exclaimed in kaelish, knowing it was a language manu had picked up fragments of. switching to stilted kerch, nina pressed on.“i was swindled by some awful criminals down in the…” she pretended to search for the word. “barrel, is it? i’ve been looking for some honest men to give me sanctuary and a bite to eat. i’ve lost everything.” without waiting for an invitation, nina hitched up her skirts and approached the man behind the counter, laying a pleading arm on theirs. “you’re my hero.” she crooned, angelic smile lighting up her face.

he didn’t notice when the bone dart slid under her sleeve and into his chest, sending him crumbling to the floor.

she only hoped that manu was having similar luck.

(...)

No drowning. Those words actually stung. Yes, Manu was good for more than that. And sure, he did love a hand-to-hand fight, all the mess and blood and violence striking something in his wildness. But he was in a mood. Hunger twisting his insides as much as he wished it all gone, quickly. There would be no chaos this time. Apparently. So Manu just nodded, begrudgingly, and accepted Inej’s hand on his shoulder as the reassurance it was meant to be. No fucking water, then. The last realization as Inej mouthed something about sharing, mentioned food as the final goal and went on her way. She had just looked and somehow, found the best way to do it. He made a mental note to ask Inej how she did it later on.

But the awe left by one was swiftly erased by the other. Nina and her tongue could wage wars on their own right. If she wasn’t throwing those words at him, Manu would’ve actually watched her in delight too. Shame that he was the target. “I’m sure you’re already doing his bidding, so be my guest, Nina,” Manu spat, the annoyance making both her name and the mention of djel into something dirty. She didn’t need to know he actually said a silent prayer to djel already. Didn’t need to know he had both faith and worship in him for that fjerdan god. For now, she could just see how her words struck a chord and that he gave her back that piece of prejudice. Even though it had some guilt in it too. One that lasted only a few seconds before she started making bets. Serious ones. That Manu would probably lose anyway. “Ten kruge it is, though I’m sure you’ll brag if I win or lose,” he snorted, arms crossed over his chest in amusement.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pick something stale just for you,” and he winked, the fierceness in his smile both in defiance and curiosity about what she would do with that hand against the door. For there was just no way of knowing what she might come up with. Again, was it not for his head as a target, he would’ve worshipped the ground she walked upon. That uncontrollable, strong and cunning beast of a woman, who threw open the door and switched to kaelish like a fucking artist. It took everything he had and the very mention of ten kruge to school his features in true despair instead of laughter, shrunk himself into desperation and follow at her wake as though he was both a victim of the robbery and of Nina. “My sister, she–” he started in kaelish, the words weighted with false desolation as another guard approached him, measuring his size and potential threat despite the noise Nina conjured to confuse them. 

And it could’ve worked, was it not for that smile and the hero part. Shit. Nina had to make him laugh, for fuck’s sake. And through the confusion it brought to the guards’ face, Manu threw a punch at him before opening his hands and calling for the water in the coffee the remaining pair had in their grips, guiding it through their noses in what must have been a burning path to their lungs. If she could pull her shit, so could Manu. Summoning in close quarters, a few steps away from them taken just for precaution. Only the guards would drown. “You had to call him a hero, didn’t you?” he snorted, focus still on the thrashing guards and the noises they made, failing attempts to do something about that coffee, Manu’s hands. This wasn’t pretty, not even clean like the death Nina gave her mark. “I lost it at that, but you can have the bragging rights, as I’m sure you would have anyway, since I sort of cheated,” Manu shrugged, the men finally going still as he raised a brow at her and asked. “What now, hurricane?”

The vent gave way despite the rust. It came apart quick enough that Inej had to catch the grate before it shambled on their heads. A couple of men, by the coarse laugh; and far too foul-mouthed to have started as bakers. What in Djel’s candied arse was there to guard about khvorost and vatrushka? Either this place was the Ravkan Army’s own bloody supplier, or else this bakery rubbed in more than custard and almond-paste.

She slipped into the narrow opening and held her breath. One exhale, then another. The air thrummed with butter and dust, with sunlight minced in parts. No sound came from the corridor below. In the unmoving dark, she let herself drop. The wraith was a long way from fabrikator roof slippers and leather gloves—but the training was still drilled in her tendons. Those far cries from a past life, symbolic enough to be props in the Komedie Brute, were stuffed in a trunk on her ship. Her ship. She blew the thought away like specks of rust. Arching the balls of her feet, she skulked down the hallway and into the second floor.

The nearest guard was dispatched with a blow to his neck. She delivered it by the textbook, a precision that’d make an alkemi balk. The bloodflow will come back to him later, Inej reasoned, unless he was fool enough to stay asleep. Her glance caught on the man’s trucheon. It struck her that a pastry, even one as well-known in the Lid as this, would have armed hands on the premises. What else passes through here? They should’ve canvassed their target better, but then—that was Ketterdam to you. Even an orphans’ house was a front for something else.

The other presence she’d counted on was nowhere in sight. Must’ve went down one of the smuggling routes that led away from the bakery, if her hunch was correct, to nose through the wares. You couldn’t fault a hired thug for going tits-up on the business ethic. Inej was not about to do him the courtesy of waiting. She breezed across the staircase two steps at once, only stopping to try the doorknobs that looked greasy enough to be used the most often. She found the cooling room at a cross-angle from the kitchens, shelves and trays pushed into walls lined with sawdust and ice. The grin that split her face felt almost feral; wild enough that not even battle could’ve put it there. Oh, the way Nina would love this.

She set to stowing the pastry in their boxes, spinning swiftly between the tall racks. She had to remind herself with a pointed effort to be careful about smudging the cream, because a certain Grisha took the integrity of their dessert deadly serious. In another satchel, Inej threw a few cartridges of cooking oil and flour. Kaz, you glorious strategist, couldn’t you stack your own fucking bunker with basic food necessities? Edible ones, at that? Those orderly rows of tincans he’d given them would have every sane soul surrender to Leyen rather than eating them. Of course, she knew the barrel king barely ate at all; barely bled, never showed up drunk, never turned his head for a pair of legs. It was what fueled his legend, wasn’t it? They didn’t call him demjin over nothing. He had reined in his physicality as carefully as one reins in a stutter; did away with humanness entirely, with the carnal disadvantage of it. Above that cane, there was bone and bile polished into marble. She’s witnessed this first hand. And yet seeing the ratway’s storage had been an object lesson in tactical blindspots. It had also been... oddly endearing. It reminded her of the boy Kaz Brekker was, and the part of him that would always stay so: an almost childish disregard for every weakness. A bronze-eyed statue, who perfected control to such an extent that he hardly glimpsed need in others.

She pulled away from the tide, shying off its touch. She hadn’t even sensed when she left the pantry and started heading into the parlor: just a wispy awareness of motion, like the warm balustrade under her hand and the dimming smell of burnt sugar. She’d been lucky Nina and Manu already got the drop on the guards. Sloppy. Write him a fucking ballad, while you’re at it, Saints, Ghafa. She had to jump the last step, where the bakers had dropped and scattered like overripe plums. The boxes jostled, but Inej kept a tight hold.

“Can either of you tell me”, she huffed out, half wheezing, “how did we select the one bakery in the lid that seems to be a smuggling hotspot? Such rotten luck feels very on brand, somehow. ”

LINGERING AT THE DOCKS LIKE A STRANGER WITH ILL-FITTING SKIN    /    @sirinej​.

THE SEA HAS BEEN THE FIXED HORIZON of an unchartered country ever since he first saw a map unfurled before him for the first time. ketterdam had always seemed like it held the entire world in its fist, pieces of everywhere floating into the harbour from all corners of land, desert and ice like flotsam and debris. poring over a cartographer’s painstakingly detailed map, he’d studied the borders of the true sea with avid focus, noted the winding border of shu han and the names of each port city that lined its shores. for a man living in a port city and a bustling hub of sea trade, sev had only boarded a ship a handful of times and always for business. for work, the few times a valuable witness had proven to be a flight risk, and the bounty on their head was too high to afford cutting their losses. 

the look on his face as his eyes skim the length of the dock, across the skiffs and barges carrying passengers and exports, is one of resting indifference. but the look in his eyes, to any sailor, any soul that’s tasted the sea and salt air and never found peace on land again, is one of undeniable longing. a touch of fatal wanderlust, even. the kind that drove you away from home and safe harbour and all that you knew, and sent you tumbling into the arms of danger and certain death, daring and untold adventure. 

“               so which one’s yours?”  

he tilts his chin skywards, gaze anchored directly ahead so captain ghafa’s discerningly sharp eyes can’t detect any hint of wayward curiosity. there’s no point in the pride of it, but it’s easier thinking about kerch as nothing more than the island, the harbour and the pier beneath their feet if he doesn’t have to wonder what lies elsewhere.  “i always thought a pirate ship was meant to look bigger.” 

She’s never been the one to read longing on people like a maternal language, an alphabet of honey, milk and soot. She never had the eyes for splitting a soul to its hairline—for gauging a man’s weakness like a cinch in the armor, an open breach for all the world to see and all the steps to walk inside, armed with their own intent. That was always Kaz’s part. He had a bloodhound’s sense for the unattainable; for what people held so far inside themselves it would tear them in two just to admit it. He used it as one uses a cutting stone whet on their own teeth.

It was Jesper’s trick as well. The gambler’s two-timing trade, the skills to sneak inside a person as if they were a vault, an abandoned house, a bedroom of no retreat. In a way, she imagined it was also Nina’s power. It was how the heartrender moved in the world before her transformation, but Inej saw the remnants of it long after, like a playing tune inverted in halves. When her ability to catch the telltale signs of fear and wanting twisted back on itself, spine curling and snapping. When her power to hear life became about listening to death instead.

The wraith never dealt in secrets she could not name; in secrets she could not trace along the winding alleys of Kerch. She was comfortable inside the world’s quiet—inside not knowing what plagues the passing bodies around her, what blooms inside the fallow fields of their chest. She could guess reflex; she could guess movement, too, especially when it sprung from the mouth of a fight. She could guess hazard and chance condensing on the horizon like a closing wound. What she couldn’t do—what she wouldn’t do easily—is look too long in the scarred depths of another. It never felt like her right. Now, though, with the crows’ planted man at her side, she cannot help but hear it. It springs on her like the drizzle of the waves. She almost goes to check, are you alright? She almost goes to ask what Kaz Brekker has on him.

Were it not for the Fjerdan wolf, she might have. But now her purpose is beyond small graces, both bigger and smaller and uglier than saving a stray soul or two. She frowns, jaw setting.

“That one. Wide in the prow.” Her hand sketches a bow to the westernmost point. The Scourge stands out between mercher vessels like a fox in a field of briars, red-mouthed and speckled with snow. Inej almost shuts her eyes to it. She’d have to meet with her crew soon. She’d have to let them know they can’t lull about in Ketterdam, not as it is. Move on without her. Staying, then? She wants to believe there was ever another choice. She wants to believe there wasn’t.

“For the time being, at least. Might have to give up command before this city burns down without me.” Her eyes flick over to the Staadwatch coat. “And you? Headed out anytime soon, once this blows over? Might put in a good word with my crew, if I can keep your real job from them.” Her smile sharpens, jumps up in her face. “They’re not fond of rats, out there on that ship. But I’m more lenient. I know this city makes two faces out of every single one.”

I know it makes monsters of circumstance more easily than it makes rain.

Her voice drops low, not scraping a whisper. “Have you found out what we asked? Any leads on his ship?” Unspoken, unsummoned, the specter of Henrik crops in her mind. His face, as it looked on that night before the slat, his back as she ran in pursuit. Brow distorted in the light of the fire, mouth bent on its own holy purpose. How far can vengeance carry its charge? It got me here. It got me all around the world. Got Kaz on top of it, too.

𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒  𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐍  𝐑𝐄𝐃.      wild,      lapping  at  the  edge  of  the  dial.      smoke  curls  up  his  throat,      causes  eyes  to  briefly  tear,      makes  him  show  his  teeth  and  taste  the  violence.      several  screams  lurch  from  throats  within  the  shadows,      gloaming  tendrils  which  swallow  dim  lit  spaces  and  order  the  absence  of  light.      there  is  nothing  lasting  for  him  to  fear.      life  has  dug  deep  into  his  stomach  and  ripped  out  the  lining.      left  him  with  faulty  organs,      the  heart  missing.      no  longer  a  fruitful  location,      the  orchard  is  quiet  and  dull  during  all  seasons.      but  the  proximity  turns  him  feral,      packed  physiques  pressing  in,      causing  him  to  fight  for  air  already  deprived  of  oxygen.      as  the  darkness  envelops  so  does  she.      a  hand,      slight  but  purposed,      wraps  around  bare  skin  and  he  reacts.      in  the  space  of  a  breath,      kaz  shoves  trespassing  silhouette  against  smoldering  wall  with  his  forearm,      embers  sparking,      the  crow  head  of  his  cane  wedged  beneath  the  offender’s  jaw.      she’s  caught  in  the  fire  glow,      recognition  flashing  before  her  inflection  can  reach  him.      inej.

kaz.      look  at  me.      what  do  you  want  me  to  do  ?

untrained  stare  turns  to  shame  as  kaz  brekker  rights  himself,      cane  lowered,      arm  drawn  back  from  collarbones.      gloved  fingers  are  sped  through  short  dark  shards  to  slick  it  back.      but  with  the  kind  of  sweat - slicked,      tousled  mess  it  had  become,      stray  strands  merely  slipped  back  over  his  forehead,      dangling  like  knife - points  by  the  gloom  of  his  eyes.      there  is  a  bestial  groan  from  the  timber  as  it  turns  to  kindling,      and  the  wraith  is  wrenched  forward,      dirtyhands  hauling  her  from  cascading  planks  in  a  vice  grip.      second  floor  succeeds  first.      he  maneuvers  them  toward  searing  steps,      his  voice  a  low  rock - salt  grumble.      ❛  henrik  .  ❜      where  brekker  labors  over  evading  touch,      rietveld  has  yet  to  release  his  hold.      ❛  i  need  you  to  follow  him  .  ❜      you,      inej,      i  need  you.

How fitting, it comes to her, the thought like a carrion’s last throes. She blinks up at Kaz, wild-eyed and listless. Blinks at the wrench of his hand on hers. Blinks at the death rattle in his throat, at their back, caving convulsively all around them. For a second of scorch and spasm, it’s all she can do. Yes. Fitting, that it took hell to bring me here—and hell to bring him to me.

Then she comes back to. She is herself, which is to say, she is a form stretched and carved out for danger. She is supine on the altar it gave her. Was this not always the bond they struck with the world? Was this not what they vowed to serve? His God is wrought from power and greed. Its bones are just old enough to weather its own desires, to nurse its own pain, but it built them this house. It built them this life. Her God is the hunt on the rooftops. Her God is dust kicked back at your heels, pockets of steel and air prying the night apart. It would rend each soul and doorway that barred their will. This life? Her God is what allowed them to keep it.

It would do so still.

Inej shakes the plaster off her shoulders. Wipes away the mortar, scrubs the caked blood pooling below her ears and nose in patches of ammonia. Makes sure her hands are dry when they grip the wooden ledge, steady and purposeful. The wraith does not slip. Does not waver on the chase. She supposes that, now, the Siren cannot be any less. She disentangles, steps from under his guard. Straddles the window with one leg thrown across. Ten feet to vault. Two more for the roll, the blunting of the impact. She’d have to keep her hand tucked under, her ankle close to chest. She’d need the knife there at the ready. “Put him on the run, then. And quick. I’ll have to be able to trail two of them at once, in case they have a safehouse.”

The other hand leaps to her neck. She pulls the scarf high over her face, and signed cotton fills her mouth like Kaelish whiskey. Beneath it, the world is dark and still. She knows Kaz cannot see her grin. She also knows he spots it anyway. He’d guess it by the flare of her eyes, by the blind move of her throat under her palm. He’d guess it by the lean of her body into his.

Is there any face she ever wore that Kaz Brekker would not recognize? It’s you, he would say. It was always you. Her eyes tell him the same, now, as the fire catches.

She slides forward, finds the right angle to jump.

NINA.

date & time:early hours of the morning, day after the fire location: the lid availability: closed @sirinej & @wanderermanu

the crowd did not see it, but trespassers walked among them. a captain, a tidemaker and a corpsewitch swelled their ranks, heads down as they blended in, melting into the city. well, nina thought, with a wry glance over her shoulder at her companions, some were blending better than others. she stuck out like a sore thumb, the brightest object in every room. mustering the humility to dampen her spirits, nina hitched her bodice up a few inches and dutifully followed inej. perhaps she’d lower it later on, when inej needed her to stand out, where distractions were meant to be made.

their objective was simple enough. slip into a bakery and fill their coffers with ontbijtkoek, poffert and krentenbollen. absentmindedly licking her lips, nina felt a pang of hunger ache through her. drüskelle hunting was strenuous work. tapping both companions on the shoulder as the approached an alleyway, she ushered them into the dug out. “normally i’m not a big stickler to plans, but given today…an easy in and out would be much appreciated. are we all clear on what to do?”

slip in and out. evade the stadwatch’s detection. but if that wasn’t possible, provide enough cover to allow inej to practice her own form of magic.

As it turned out, there was such a thing as too tall, too blond, too much. Manu felt it in the ill-fitting clothes he had stolen, in the way he was poised like a tower over Inej and Nina, and in the care he took to seem unphased as his brain screamed: cut feet on sand, fjerdan feet viciously cut by fjerdan blades angrily covered in sand. The worst combination he knew. Shit. There wasn’t one single inconspicuous thread in his entire body. He was loud and wild and exhausted. Sore, hungry and uncomfortable. One look at Inej and Manu couldn’t help but mentally curse the entirety of this supply run. Even Nina, who wasn’t the famous wraith, was doing a better job, – though she was, in her own way, anything but inconspicuous.

Fuck.

But not a disappointment so heartfelt that food wouldn’t fix his problem. Or the great opportunity to get out of that hole and breath real air, for that matter. Manu couldn’t help the bitterness in his silent chuckle. The day Ketterdam, of all places, would be the definition of real air for him was a miserable one indeed. Djel help them all. “We get in, grab every single piece of delicious food we can possibly carry, and we get out,” Manu recited, anxiety mixed with hunger and uncertainty as he said: “Right?”, it wouldn’t hurt to get the specifics, though.

“I just wanna eat, and I swear on Djel that if so much as a staadwatch get between us and that fucking food, I’ll drown them,” he sighed, all the energy invested on that threat focused on his eyes, as his voice was already hoarse from the night before. “So I hope you two know how to swim, because this is Ketterdam in a very, very shitty day.”

Inej gave a quick nod, almost perfunctory. Her mind was trained on the sources of movement inside the lid, attuned to the weight and cadence of the guards’ steps. Three in the parlor. Two on a higher floor. Could be any number of them in the root cellar. When the squaller’s words reached her at last, her laughter got trapped between a huff and a croak. Hunger does make the man, it seemed. “No drowning. No straying from the plan.” She flinched at how that sounded—the Brekker slice of her voice in the air. Saints, she was glad her face was half inside her cowl. She tugged it lower, speaking in the crook of its shadow. “It’ll be fine. You two clear the first room in. I’ll go in through the air vent. If that’s rusted over, I can always break through the balcony and in Ghezen’s hand be the cost.” She squeezed Manu’s shoulder in reasusrance.

As they headed closer, she could just barely hear Nina’s planning voice. It carried that subtle slip into a general’s posture, second army to the last. She had missed it; she had missed this, collaboration for the sake of it, tasks and abilities latching in place like complementary clockwork. She didn’t bother voicing the thought. Just raised her hand to Nina, fingers tipping off three, then two. Her fist dropped to her dagger. If there’s any grisha, she mouthed, tell them we can share.

Her eyes scaled the upper slope of the building. Shoddy work on that blasted roof. It was tight enough to jump over, if she was running her wraith tracks, but the flat angle made it hard to climb. Markedly harder if she had to do so without scattering debris in her wake. Unless everyone in the bakery had their ears stuffed with dough, it would be a dead giveaway. She’d have to take a wider route across. She crouched down by the sturdiest drainpipe, ready to leap. Her gaze shot back to the others. A smile flickered inside. “For the pastry, comrades.”

OPEN ━━ ​​

The coolness of the ground was a kindness she couldn’t even come close to properly appreciating after everything the night had thrown at them. Sigyn lay there, sprawled out across the stone of the ratway, her arms stretched out wide on either side. Dried blood dappled her face, and she honestly couldn’t remember exactly where it had come from ( one of the drüskelle? or what it one of the dregs who’d sought her for help on their way down? ) It was all a blur, one moment melding and twisting into the next like bleeding watercolors, and she was too exhausted to bother putting any of it in order.

Her eyes flutter closed for a moment, and she could feel the inward pull of sleep beckoning her to rest. Maybe… just a little while.

Approaching footsteps wring a groan from her lips. Maybe they’ll keep walking. 

They stop at her feet. No such luck. 

“If whatever it is isn’t going to kill you in the next five minutes, then it can’t wait until after my nap.”

The past hours coil together, winding and wounding into a bruised knot. Inej has to slash it with her body, like a shove down the stairs, a hitch over the ledge, in order to untie it into sense again. The minutes spool over her hands, and she realizes it’s been thousands of them. She realizes it’s been a whole day. Between the fire and going after de Leyen, she’s less a creature of time and bone than she is the frame of Brekker’s plans, the bird-wing of his deep intent. A branch, shot out from his need—for her, yes, but also for the two of them as they once were, back when tried to take over the world. She is the wraith, now. Again; or maybe simply a different kind. A specter more fledged and gorged on blood; on the knowledge of what blood is spilled for. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if all it took was one fall to make this real again. Doesn’t matter that the last day, the last night, feels both hers and not hers all at once.

She is a ghost, and ghosts don’t count the hour. It takes the Ratway to remind her of that. Inej skuls out from Kaz’s room. The shadows seem to swirl even here, as if the summoner is still goading them; as if the summoner is still clewing & clawing his way into her world.

In the murk, her steps catch on a flagstone. It’s something not quite natural, serrated like burnished wood. A makeshift table, littered with all the sundries of recovery and resistance. Beneath its poles, she can just riddle out Sigyn’s outline; the lithe limbs stretched out, the back faintly trembling. Inej picks up a washbasin. Throws in a bundle of rags. Her voice is so hoarse when she kneels before the girl, it’s more likely to stab her than to wake her.

As the flames start to lick over the world, the air thins down, dries from the walls up. The house blows its cheeks like the mouth of a furnace. Inej’s first instinct is to hold out her hands. She pushes them up, then forward, as if this was knife-throwing practice; as if this was her readying to blunt the thud of a fall, of a mistimed salt, the crash of a guard’s body into hers. As if this was all the things she was taught to do—the things he taught her to do. Behind her, a squaller is screaming. Someone else grits their teeth, groans under a hard thud. Their mouth creaks, rather than cries; they sound like the only weight propping up the backbone of the slat. She cannot turn  to check who they are. She cannot even bend in the smoke. Her arms touch the heat and cannot fight it. Her eyes slice through the half-formed red, hell birthing itself, and cannot find its weak spots. She drops them back. Nearly falls back herself.

Inej’s second instinct is to reach for him. It happens before thought, before selfhood; it happens in the space where things are made and cannot be unmade again. A caul of night and memory, no less searing than the fire. She scours the dark until she finds him. For the first time in seven years, her fingers seek—and touch—Kaz Brekker. No armor between them. His skin is rough, pealing with warmth. Saints. No armor around them, either. Her voice betrays all the horror of the moment. It catches and stalls, the same as it would if he touched her any other way. It would still wreck her like this; in any room, in any world. What a time for this realization.

she looks as though she could fall at any second, but, bird kicked from nest, look as though she’d turn any descent into flight, trip off the edge and only spin higher into the air. he’s seen precious few routines, but doesn’t doubt that she’d find a way to fly, even here in ketterdam. after all, she managed to get away, if only for a time.

but here she is again, and they can tell that she hasn’t chosen the city, no matter how well she slots back into it, no, there’s a different tether, a different meaning of home, one she and hers has never connected to something as intangible as a city. jesper, for him it’s that which rises out of the ground, the landmarks and the skyline, cherry trees or slip-shod buildings.

he knows her, sees the ways her eyes darken as she leans back, and it’s easy to fall back into old roles, old skins, old truths, for old friends. who’s changed the least out of the three of them? who’s changed the most? but it’s with a breath of air that she hasn’t changed so much to have forgotten, to shy away from their games, this gift from only the two of them. she spins to face him, some - some shock? remembrance? - written on her face, and he cannot help the playful look on his own, eyebrows darting up as he grins, wets his lips, silently dares her to chance her own, to see how much she remembers.

the crow cry is better than he remembers and it takes all their strength of will to not start laughing loudly, has to catch himself from tumbling over the tiles as he shakes with surpressed giggles, and his hand flaps at inej before forming a thumbs up, before reaching over to cover his eyes, shoulders still shaking.

he goes to try his own again, match and better, but barely shapes his mouth around the sound before he cuts off and covers his face, tries again, fails again, -

“ cAAW! CAAW! “

the cackle gets smothered beneath her palm, but jesper’s grows to match it. the sharpshooter’s cry is more of a titter. over her shoulder, she watches their bone-deep inability to keep serious, watches their features knit into a bubbling disaster, and for a moment she thinks this is all there is. this is what she gambled on, when she came back here. this second on the rooftops; this roll of elbows and shoulders, joints fitting where they should. she thinks, too, how ketterdam was every bit as much about jesper as it was about the menagerie—as it was about heleen, and pekka, and her own pallid self, already dimming, already blunting its light to the world.

inej slips out from her nook and crawls up to them. she lunges over the clattering tiles, hair swept in her face, and tries to cover their mouth. she’s laughing too hard to land the blow. it skims their jaw, then slouches off. inej has to rest her forehead on their thigh just to get her breath back. shhhh, she hisses to them, but there’s no weight behind it. the sound drops to a wheeze.

at her side, her hand trips on the sign language they’ve cobbled up in the barrel. it holds the pieces they learned together, gathered like a paper trail for all the places they’ve sheltered in and all the people that formed them: half standardized ravkan, half kerch. the system was too motley to cover the intricacies of a heist proper, but what it allowed them to do was single out targets (inej), conquests (jesper), and complex, ever-expanding insults (both). right now, inej is hinting at brekker’s room. she sketches bastard, sketches empty, and about a dozen other pointers in between. he wouldn’t be able to keep indoors if he heard us. he’d have come out to meet us by now. this one is a less certain bet. she holds it just as close.

she brings a hand up, wipes at the truth that stains her face.

when her eyes finally glide up to them, they’re pooled with silver. tears that didn’t clear and lamps that start shooting up all around them. the city settles into its evening, cossetting the balcony from every side, and inej is ready to call it quits, usher them both inside and break into his liquor cabinet. she cranes her neck to get one last view of ketterdam.

that’s when she sees the uniforms. it’s nothing but a pinprick of blue, less tarnished than the skyline, less uniform than the sea. the row seems to bulk from four gangways at once. it mounts up right under her gaze, hardening into a single-minded formation. inej’s chest goes cold. that’s a crowd with a purpose. not staadwatch; not razorgulls, not if she remembers a whit about them. no one moves quite like that, in the barrel; that’s higher training. that’s higher stakes than kvas and bleeding guts. besides, saints, they would’ve told her if the crows got swept in an in-house conflict. some scrap for territory, some pissing contest. surely, at least jesper would’ve thought she deserves to know. but then again—he didn’t clue her up on a lot of things, these past years. could it be fjerda? for them to make that kind of move without kaz getting the drop on it...

she alerts jes to it. clutches their arm as if she’s still the girl of a dozen years ago, terrified she’ll slip right before the target. terrified she won’t, too—that she’ll make the jump, that she’ll have to commit to the kill. you keep them busy, wraith, jesper would assure her, hands tight on her shoulders, just til i get here. you don’t have to do anything else.

she used to balk at killing, didn’t she? how feeble, that echo. how sweet. perhaps the only part of her this city saved, the only part worth remembering, still does.

the night peals into an omen. it scales the buildings like a physical force, higher and sharper with every second. she feels it climb on her back. “eight people, at least”, inej whispers. she forces her voice to stay low, wedged in a place that neither fear nor alcohol can reach and soak up. it happens anyway.

the name rang a bell, although it took aleni a moment to place why that was. she was certain she’d never seen this woman before; they hadn’t been introduced until now, but familiarity struck her the same way inej had walked into the crow club as though she was already well acquainted with it. a spark of realization, and aleni put the pieces together. inej ghafa was a bit of a legend among the dregs, after all. the wraith, the spider, the soundless ghost that used to haunt ketterdam rooftops and steal priceless secrets. the crusader whose knives never missed their marks.

the stories hadn’t prepared her for inej’s beauty. it was the kind that crept up on you, didn’t demand attention at first but held it once you paused to look. she was small, but exuded a quiet command over the room, deliberate in every movement she made. aleni felt a sudden need to straighten her own posture, to not walk with such a clumsy gait or fidget unnecessarily. she noticed that inej still smelled like the sea, a scent that filled her with warmth and some forgotten longing.

after all, the life inej led was achingly similar to what aleni wanted for herself. she could just picture a life free at sea, molding her own destiny as she went along. bending the world to her own vision instead of attempting to pass under its nose. she wished she could bring someone to their knees as easily as throwing a knife in their direction, climb and leap with nimble feet, a spider that no one could catch in his fist. instead, aleni felt more like a sitting duck. without the protection of kaz brekker behind her, what was she? a girl with no real skill to help herself and nowhere near enough courage to redirect her fate.

“aleni. it’s nice to meet you, i’ve heard a fair amount,” she admitted, gripping inej’s proffered hand and giving it a gentle shake. not even a hint of the small science, as she’d suspected. everything about inej had been build and wired in from the ground up. this was something aleni was always endeared by: people who emanated tremendous power, but weren’t born with it. people who took it for themselves.

time to kill. well, if tonight’s patrons weren’t going to give aleni any trouble, she might as well spend more time around the wraith. “what’s brought you back to ketterdam? from what i heard, you were leading a fearsome crew out on the true sea.”  

a fearsome crew? the grin slips unbidden. inej can see her legend already blooming on the girl’s lips, the traces of fiction stamped there like confectionery. she would raise a finger to wipe them off. she would do many things, here, were this her story, and hers alone.

she bats away the flashes of rilar criss-crossed in the lookout, spitting sunflower seeds at any idlers below; of naya and adrim running streak naked in the storm; of her and masha howling at one another in the rigging, barefoot and tangled up to their neck, while the rest placed bets on who will tumble first. she fends off these images as if the other can read her mind; as if they’re already disappearing, running downstream as all myths do.

it’s different, she would tell the girl, living inside a legend. stepping in a tale always happens a beat too late; you miss the landing, you blunder the part where you should make it yours. you never get the final drop until it sifts by, and nothing lodges in the trail. you watch the curtain and it feels like a gallows’ raise. lucky, if you get to see it; luckier, still, if you don’t.

but then she takes a better glance, and realizes she doesn’t have to. the girl knows all of it. she’s at the helm of a story that pelts along without her. inej tilts her head into this realization. whatever demjin wants with aleni, inej will take front seat to watch him pull it off. there’s more grit there than he warrants. somehow, with the dregs’ recruits, it always seems to be. there is just this boundless, unplumbed depth in all of them, where both plans and promises plunge.

she lets her hand go. clasps them behind her back, then turns to look for a room.

the entire row of separate booths is still slotted out of view, as if this clientele had anything worth protecting. inej has to duck under the stairwell and palm the way up. she could cut the air with the gravity aleni expects, but she doesn’t have the heart.

“brekker’s my friend”, is what she says instead. it might be the understatement of the decade. maybe just below: alina starkov, nifty with a light or two. she clears her throat, quick to offset the ridiculous sound of it all. “i wanted to see if ketterdam’s still there after fjerda finishes up. call it professional curiosity or call it honorable debt. the deal reads the same. my crew was promised something more than slim pickings from the rubble, and i can sleep easy at night.” she rolls her head around the parlor, where from downstairs some razorgulls started brawling. a machine clangs under their firsts. “though it won’t be anywhere near this mess.” she stoves her weight against the door to close it proper. “saints. no fabrikators since fahey took over?”

INEJ GHAFA ━━ @sirinej

“Kaz ━━ !” The alert of her arrival comes just has her hand closes around the worn old doorknob. It twists, the motion familiar and utterly lacking even the slightest trace of hesitation that would normally be expected from a person about to barge into the barrel boss’ private room. Sigyn presses inwards, unburdened, and steps inside. “Kaz, it’s important! The bones have a message for… oh.”

Frosted blue eyes quickly flicker from one side of his bedroom to the other, finding his form absent in all the familiar places. He wasn’t sitting at his desk, sulking over stacks of papers with that perpetually grim expression on his face. Nor did he stand at the closed window, hard eyes glaring downward at the comings and goings of the slat. He wasn’t in bed, either ━━ which, admittedly, wasn’t a surprise. The bastard didn’t sleep. The last time she could recall him actually using the thing was when she stood watch over his recovery; nearly two combative weeks of it, a feat for a man she had to all but drag by the scruff back from the brink of death. 

“You’re not here,” she finally states aloud, to no one at all, her voice a huff of disappointment. The decision to stay despite his absence, however, came seamlessly, her hand moving without thought to close the door behind her. She would wait so that the bones’ message would be delivered as soon as he returned, and in the mean time she would make herself comfortable.  

Sigyn glides her way across the room, the idea of lounging on the couch for awhile initially appealing, until the corner of her eye happens to notice a hat sitting on a corner table instead. Diverted, for no good reason, she stops there, and picks it up for inspection. It was black ( because of fucking course it was ) and built sturdy. She spins it briefly between her hands, before lifting it to sit atop her own head. Half-a-size too large, it tilts to one side. Pleased with herself nonetheless, she hums a quiet little tune which, not a moment later, cuts silent.

 She wasn’t alone anymore.

 A chill tickles up the side of her arm, and her gaze darts back toward the window. It had been closed when she’d arrived, but now was opened, the framing curtains shifting quietly with the evening’s breeze. She felt it then, a heartbeat; the quietest she’d ever sensed, faint and just barely detectable at the very end of her intuition’s reach. It was behind her, but Sigyn remained still, her lips curving upwards, “you’re her,” she says, “the wraith. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Inej has been waiting on the ledge long after Jepser left. It took a while for the streets to clear, for the mill to branch into pubs and brothels. It took longer, still, for the Slat to fizzle into an early silence. The Kerch heat bled out during the night, swallowed back with a gulp by the stones and metal that had birthed it. She’s standing outside the fold-up window, ribs pressed to the cooling brick, and pushes back a shiver. The footsteps gather at the base of the roof. In the dying wind, the noise carries clear.

She only needs the first one to realize it isn’t him.

This, Ghafa, had been a piss-poor idea. 

The next sound drives the point home. She hears the regret in the girl’s voice, excitement surging and subsiding, and her own throat lurches to match it. She has to catch her breath before it tips her off. She knows that note. That pitch, climbing lower and lower still. How many times did she race to a place where Kaz should’ve been, only to find him moved on to some other lead, some other drop? It might as well be her on the other side of that wall.

She also knows that room. No one is at liberty to enter it; not from the Barrel, not from the dregs, not at time of war or daggers drawn. No one, barring, of course, whoever—well. The wraith slices the thought away. Her hand glides over the pane, wedges it open. Of course, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Out of everything... out of everything, this is what gets to her the least. It’s been years. Kaz would have found someone—should have, one way or another. Inej is glad of it. The Barrel is a starved enough place as it is.

She tosses her braid back, so that it won’t catch in the jamb. Twists her head to look at the stars one last time. Blanketed, almost; smothered by Ketterdam’s manmade breath. The wraith slinks down inside the room, a grain on a tongue of darkness.

She doesn’t want to listen in on this. It’s not within her right, but it’s also, oh, very much not within her bloody power. Before she can spy on any more familiarity, she alerts her presence to the other. A change soft enough to dispel the quiet, but not shatter it beyond repair; a swish of cotton, a shuffle of her step on the carpet. She puts her weight into it until it’s noticed.

It’s her own party trick, the only one she’s ever known. At the back of a grisha, in the last room of a lethal house, Inej Ghafa becomes material again. Wraithing and reverting, Jes used to quip. As always, they had the rightest idea when they knew the least of it.

It works; the girl turns.

The wraith raises her eyes. A nod, eyes glinting. Her smile slices like a candle-wick. The last taper before wax swells up to cover it. She is beautiful. This, too, should not have been a surprise. It’s not what Inej would have imagined as his... saints, Inej never imagined his type at all. She would wager there aren’t two people in the whole of Ketterdam who ever thought of him that way. Like blasphemy, almost, isn’t it? They don’t paint the saints tangled in bedsheets. A demon, then, had to be much the same. It was the mantle he chose.

She wonders, now, whether he took it off for her.

She watches the girl twirl, still wearing his hat. Her smile broadens, but it slips from her eyes. Yes, perhaps he did. She seemed smart enough not to ask it of him.

“Saints, I haven’t heard that name in a while. Yes. I suppose I still am. And you are his...”, she trails off. She wants to be respectful, here. Bone-witch? Zowa? Associate? What’s the right word, the one vast enough to span all the lesser? To hitch inside it those tiny, chipped up meanings? Maybe there cannot be one.

They all live outside the lines of what can be spoken.

Inej taps her fingers to her chin. “I didn’t hear enough about you. Not yet.” Her lips slant upward, full of intent. “I’d love to change that.” Her body slides back from the shadows. She draws up to the cabinet, praying this idiot didn’t bobby-trap his room while she was gone, and reaches for the top shelf. She has to stand on her tiptoes, but the bottle is there. Dustier than usual; lighter, too. Whoever drank from it last, it must’ve been a long time ago, but it was a sizable portion. Her palm wraps around the skull-cap. She has it memorized like the first key home. She brings it down. Dangles it before the girl, bronze scattering the lamplight.

“Kaelish whiskey. Felt like a good place to start.”

like a gathering of shadows in the slant light, the wraith arrived. or had she come as the siren, wielding hand and rope like a trident of the sea. maybe she would never wear the wraith again, and matthias would never have the wolf’s head pin. inej, he reminded himself, did not belong to kaz anymore, if she had ever. they’d both left something behind on the ragged coastline. matthias wondered if the old clothes were as stiff and ill-fitting as his, though knowing inej she’d burned them before even lifting anchor.

he chanced a look in her direction, eyes cast over his shoulder and never sitting in one spot for too long. just taking her in, trying to decipher who had come for him – the wraith, the siren, or just inej. perhaps they were all the same, different sides of a rough-cut gem and not the costumes he’d imagined. 

she hadn’t stabbed him yet, though. that was a start. 

matthias turned his gaze back to the water. grisha believed in sainthood and the making at the heart of the world. matthias knew the ice and the sea; the forging, the undoing of all things. the ships at a distance, every man’s wish on board. their death, too, if inej was at the helm. whispers of her had strayed even to the northern shores of fjerda, though by the time they reached matthias in his driftwood towns each story had taken on a different shape. only he knew who laid at the center of each, a private truth when so much of him was a lie. again and again, matthias writes out debts to inej and the crows. his ledger was almost full.

“inej,” he said, only once he could no longer count the stone’s ripples. his fingers tightened around the edge of the stone bench, but matthias didn’t dare move until he knew what inej had come for. she did not ask a question, and so he’d give her not quite a reply. 

“i’ve found that when he wants something, he rarely takes death as an answer.” an inconvenience, at best, but the work was never done for kaz brekker, or matthias helvar, or, he supposed, inej ghafa. death was a relief they had not earned, or a punishment not yet doled out. there were pieces to move on the board, pockets still to line, men to gut or make wish they had been. 

there were a dozen things to say to inej, all of them insubstantial. i’ve missed you. it’s good to see you. how have you been? theirs was never the way of idle chatter. besides, matthias wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know just yet.

“i can only assume you haven’t come here just to intimidate me with pebbles.” although it’s working.

you’d be surprised, drüskelle, inej thought with her heart in her fist, at what he’s wiling to take for an answer. she ran her eyes down the banks. you’d be even more surprised at what he wants in the first place; i used to know, once. the grove was covered in exhaust dust. even here, tucked beneath the arches, the fumes had scattered in thin films over time. the world had a way to reach inside all of us. was that the lesson ketterdam saved for her? stitches and temples, selfhood folded twice over: the seams were bound to come undone, sooner or later.

it wasn’t kaz that called you. he only pried away the shell, the shroud, whatever layers held back what was left of you. it was your own need that led you here. raw and open at last.

she sidestepped the bench in a wide berth. at that distance, he might have been anyone; features clouded over by the foliage. she could only make out his hair, set like slate against the green of their temple. a single midrib splitting the leaf in two.

inej remembered nina revering that mop; saintly, she used to call it. it always earned her a pinch from the wraith. don’t blaspheme at my knitting table. take your ravkan mores over to jesper. you might even humble him a measure or two. he’s yet to learn making lust holy.

dirty and streaked with smog, this saint had seen better days.

she walked up the river. knelt down, still without a word, and dipped her hands until they reached the sediment. because the stream was artificial, goaded by the small science rather than any wheel of the world, the alluvium must’ve remained unchanged. her fingers clenched around the same clay of a century ago: a sedate coldness. she wondered, idly, if that’s how the glaciers in fjerda felt. if that’s how the permafrost moved under your heels, when you climbed the endless plateau, and you knew you were ruffling the sleeping seat of God.

i killed men of your homeland, drüskelle. slavers hold the same horror in every language. slavers look the same in every grave. i stopped seeing you as one of them years ago. i forgave you the moment she had. we both knew djel means more than what they made of Him. inej raised her head, a breath as high as the silence. i never imagined i should worry about meeting you under ghezen’s hand instead.

she thought she had known him. she had known his silence. not in the way she knew jesper, never-still jesper, never-silent-until-too-low-to-climb jesper. she could read the lighting in the fog of jesper’s distance, as they drifted and then plunged into the nearest spiral, the nearest punishment. not in the way she knew nina, either. greenglass-sharp nina, raging-in-the-night nina, can-never-hold-a-grudge nina. with zenik, she could time the beats in the storm, shirk its tightest, darkest eye with a hum. she could meet nina with stillness when her rage needed to crash against the stones, and with a tempest of her own when she could not carry it alone. matthias’ company, though, never demanded anything of her. inej did not have to be oracle or lighthouse, pier or spark; she simply brought her own silence to meet him.

she flicked a look over her shoulder. it felt sewn with catgut, her frown; a set of silk and wire that would not let her blink. this was what she did not forgive matthias, now: these quiet moments, this calm, even under the probe of knives and footfalls, of risks bearing down. the peace between them was drawn from one vein, and one vein alone. faith was voiceless.

trust, then, had to be voiceless too.

“you have about two minutes to start explaining what happened on that isle. generously, at that. i say two because there’s a good man waiting for me back up there, and a plate of dumplings that might be just be worth the biological hazard of this city. so start speaking. kaz has a bone-witch, i’ve heard. dripped to me down the grapevine. is she responsible for it? was it planned all along?” and why in the pit did you not tell her?

that one was the easiest of all. the question, even unspoken, made her jaw snap. narrowed her eyes to a sliver. matthias did not spare nina because it’s what kaz ordered him. and kaz? oh, demjin to the last. kaz ordered him because it’s what he himself would’ve done. if brekker could’ve faked his death to her and do away with all the technicalities, with all the answers she demanded from him, he would’ve done it a dozen times by now. and inej, like nina, would’ve spent the years wondering.

in his own way, he did. in her own way, she had.

she wiped her palms down her trousers. the mud barely scotched it; the leather ran deep, ran dark, as if she were still with the crows. inej grimaced at the thought.

“i do not care who brekker brings back up, unless i put a knife in them myself.” when i last met you, i did not kill. for the most part, that still holds true. but saints, helvar, look at the symmetry. when i first met you, it was all they taught you to do.

there’s more than just grisha magic in this world. that’s what she’d tell inej, half a dozen glasses of kaelish whiskey into a night, if the night were to silence itself and the stars were to shine. there’s more than just grisha magic in this world. i see it in the way you press the cool edge of your daggers to your lips, a silent prayer said to faceless saints. i see it in the way jesper twirls his revolvers, a tightrope between chaos and beauty. i see it in the way wylan sketches, face screwed up in concentration. i see it in the way kaz looks at you. there’s more than grisha magic in the world, if you know where to look.

and inej would know, because she had voyaged the world, ravished enemies and seen the chasm between life and death, that because nina was raised in the little palace, because she was taught to see the world as grisha and non-grisha, what she was really trying to say was: i see you. i love you. 

they had other words for their affection too. a casual ‘waffles?’ after a completed mission. a knowing glance across a card’s table. swapping local delicacies from their various destinations (inej gritted her teeth through soda bread, nina gushed over shu dumplings). and full throated hugs - nina hugging inej as tight as she dare.

snorting at inej’s question, nina batted kaz brekker’s spectre away. “saints no. kaz knows i don’t respond well to summons.” no, kaz knew people - and knew exactly how to guarantee her return, even if nina herself did not. “although he was waiting at the gangway. i was almost touched.” nina paused, stressing the last word. “almost.” 

but since they’re on the topic…she arches an eyebrow, shoots inej an expectant look. “am i to assume he bid you to return? i hope he was -” she almost selects sentimental, but thinks better of it. “- polite, about it?”

she nursed her share of lies, over the years. no match for the ones that ruled the barrel—haskell’s promises, jesper’s hollow ante, brekker’s victories, pyhrric to the last—but just enough. she lied to nina, too. a handful of times, scattered over their patch of shared history like rickrack stitches: yes, ravkan kvas is every bit as good as suli rakija. oh, mint could absolutely be a waffle flavour. no, of course gray doesn’t botch your complexion. and, later still, kneeling at her side and reaching up to hold her, willing herself to look: yes, the grief gets easier. yes, the guilt does.

she finds she cannot lie to her, now.

her friend asks for the truth and inej’s eyes leap up. they perch somewhere just above her shoulder: in a sash window, a mother hoists her son on her hip and points at the docks. she must be showing him the waterwheels, the cranes that look like animals long gone. she’s singing him the world even as it changes. inej blinks the image away.

back to nina, back to the winged shadow that stalks the docks, she pulls a face. “no. no, it didn’t go quite like that.” the wince deepens, sharpens. she turns them both in the opposite direction, arm still clasped around nina’s, and starts walking. she sets a slow, sidelong pace. her crew will meet her later; she’s left instructions before they spotted shore, but they should still see her walk off the grid, rather than disappear under it in that wraith-like way. the ghostly path only nina can meet her on.

she doesn’t bother to hide her trail. doesn’t bother with her expression, either. she glances at her friend with all the doubt and disappointment of five years seeping through it. presses her lips steady. “i came by myself. my own damned, clever volition—if one can even call it that, where this place is concerned.” the smile is wry, the rest of it pushed under.

it doesn’t need to be spoken in order to be admitted. the barrel has its own denomination; it pits willpower against whim, paints them both indistinguishable. choices are never quite choices there, once you touch the first step down. nina knew. nina felt it deeper than most.

“he’s stopped writing.” a scoff, a pause to round the next corner. she clicks her tongue into it. “saints, maybe we both did. years back. it was safer, i think. point is, i wouldn’t know—couldn’t know what this fjerdan cock-up is all about. there were just... rumors. each one more raving mad than the last. i had to come and see before i let it twist my head. come and save what i could.” her eyes screw up, lashes shading the white. “as if he ever needed saving.”

closed starter for @sirinej  setting: the slat, afternoon

perhaps, all things considered, it would do well for her to be more subdued – the destruction of fifth harbor didn’t bode well for the dregs, and she personally has lost pricey goods in it – more placid, more like a merchant, a treacherous voice whispers – but no, that is not her. she looks good in black, that much is true, but she looks good in every color, and she much prefers the flash of the barrel to mercher black. the sea has taken from her, but it has also given back, in a way that cannot be compared. 

so, it’s with the sound of clinking bottles and utter glee emanating from her pores that she barges down the stairs in the slat, well-supplied for a long overdue reunion. “well, captain –” she crows, waving one of the bottles in the air to underline her point, “what’s it going to be? i got some libations, ghezen knows a regular draught won’t do – but where do you want to go? we can go to the crow club, get a private parlor – a nice clean tavern near the university, sit in the sun on one of the canals and watch the world go by – what do you feel like?”

inej cannot help but lift an eyebrow at the apparition; she had changed in a blink, and grabbed the bottle even faster. the cut and swirl of her clothes looks dizzying; it’s not kerch, not even kaelish, but a smart merge of the two. they rustle on the stairs like winds of warning, like the first storm raising the sea below your feet, and she’s smiling before she knows it. of course valdis would have more glamor put together than the whole of ketterdam had waiting for her.

the captain reaches out for the broker’s hand, wiggles her fingers in the swirling dust. “come, love”, she drawls, “give us a twirl. you’re by far the best sight since i’ve docked. council should put you right up on the flag.” she sways forward herself, leans out for the bottle. her arm links around val’s elbow. “nice and clean? valyusha, please—as if we were ever.”

she tugs her out into the streets, pace brisk and laughter bubbling. she slows down only to tip the bottle. inej’s steps are practiced at rushing away from the slat; her head, too, is practiced at not turning back to look at it. she can only feel it receding, dimming its pull. she takes another swig.

“is that your hunting ground, now? university hangouts?” her smile is prim, far too much for the question. it’s a faint shadow over the lip of the crystal neck. “i don’t think any student could handle you, dorogaya.” for a second, she wants to ask valdis to take her far below the canals, on what was once rival territory. she wonders: does kaz have any rival left? all bloody rules of mice and men claim that he must, that it’s the way the world spins, but he is neither of those things, is he? he’s a crow. he’s not beholden to an order, of nature or otherwise.

roof of the slat || current day || @sirinej

like the crows they are, the rooftops are what call them, though jesper tends to perch in a corner, sightlines and bird eye views, whilst inej flies across them, darts between the whispers that echo out of chimneys.

for now though, the pair balance on the roof of the slat, jesper tucked away on the corner from kaz’s window. it had been some time since they’d practiced, but the test would be whether or not they could get away with -

a glance over up to inej and jesper stifles the grin that spans his face to shape his mouth, calls out  “ caaaw - caaw! “

she balances on the ledge, one leg flung over, the other crooked at the knee. a flask of nastoiki is tucked in the press. inej scoops it up. she downs it quicker than she can taste it.

the moment stretches like a muscle of its own.

the air is silent, warm as the firebrick beneath her palms. of course, to ever say silence here, you have to mean the kerch kind: smelters clanging, gateposts spewing out workers for the evening shift, dockyards bottlenecked by extra traffic. worse, now, with fifth harbour blown to the pit. it’s the kerch kind of warmth, too. stuffy, blistering, and about as soothing as being buried alive. it has that smell she wore in her hair for months, as if someone tried to pour creosote over the marshes—make a world out of what shouldn’t be.

she cannot keep them here. not for much longer, now. her crew chose her because they were ready to forfeit belonging; not settle for it instead. besides, she’s sacked this place already, this citadel of martyrdom. she’s gathered her goodbyes and amends, her countless proofs she was right, those years ago. has been right ever since—this is his world.

she lets herself slide back on her elbows. her boot-tip lifts to the horizon, blocking out the chimneys and turrets of the city. it distorts the landscape until it isn’t even ketterdam anymore, until they could imagine themselves anywhere else. well, jesper never would.

this, as so many other illusions, is ghafa-carved and ghafa-served.

jesper, saints bless them, must realize what she’s thinking. the crow call smacks flat into her, a name you used to wear, a cypher you swore by. the wraith reels to face them. so fast, that if she hadn’t locked an ankle under the weatherboard she would’ve already been falling. she could’ve made a save for it, maybe, lunging for the drainpipes or the gable, but not without alerting the house. she would not give up the game so soon.

they used to do this, over the years: a hide and seek with brekker’s sanity—and every poor sod that happened to be in the slat. how many caws could they get away with, before someone raising their screen to check? how many bottles did it take before they started slipping? the whole point, jesper had explained, face as somber as a first army general, is flying -hah!- low. they usually won. which is to say, they usually won, except where kaz was concerned.

and right there is brekker’s window. just a blade of dirty panes in the sunset, frame propped with a broken tile. inej cuts it a glance. so we’re doing this?, her eyes say to jesper. the wraith reads the answer before it ever forms. she tips her head back, cups both hands to her mouth.