Work Text:
"It's odd," Inej remarks, the week after she learns that Jesper is grisha. "You seem to collect grisha."
She's smiling as she says it, seated by the window in her sleeping clothes tossing bread to the crows outside, so it's a joke.
Kaz grunts. It's a bit more strained than he would like, but he's not in the practice of lying to Inej, and pretending that this is a joke would be a lie.
It's not a coincidence that Kaz has managed to collect Grisha. He found Jesper first, who knew about his abilities but was hiding them, and then he found Inej, who hadn't come into her own powers yet, and then he'd met Nina and pulled her into his circle, and then he'd found Wylan, who still had no idea that his skill with chemistry and explosions was more than just the work of his expensive chemistry tutor.
One is a chance. Two is a coincidence. Three is luck. Four… four is a pattern.
He's lucky that none of them know about number four. It's all luck. Kaz is just lucky.
That's a better joke. Kaz has never been lucky. Anything Kaz has ever had, he's clawed his way to, bloody hand after bloody hand.
It's not luck. It's in his bones. Quite, literally, in fact. When he stands too close to Grisha, he hums with it.
He'd been shattered to find out he wasn't a grisha, when he was a child. Jordie, a few years older, all of ten, had been practising pulling metal into wires. Kaz had smiled up at him, gummy, and asked when he would be able to do the same.
"Oh, darling," his mother had said. "You can't."
Kaz's little pudgy face had wrinkled up, ready to cry.
"You can do something else though," his mother had said, quickly, and then she'd pressed his hand into Jordie's, and Jordie had shouted, and the wire he was pulling went faster, smoother, easier.
"You're an amplifier, Kazzie," Jordie had said, and after that Kaz had always been there to hold his brother's hand, even when it turned out that even with Kaz there, Jordie wasn't strong enough to do anything truly useful.
And then Jordie had died.
Kaz hadn't been able to bear the touch of skin after that. It was hard, sometimes, to know that all he would have to do would be to reach out, and everything would be so much easier for his friends.
He never did. To touch someone else's skin -
No. It could never happen. Even the thought made him feel like gagging, the waters rising in his mind.
Even if he managed it, once, they would know. A brush of fingertips against his skin would tell them all who he was. Their hand around his wrist would make them so much more powerful.
He'd done it once, trapped in a closet with Inej, asking her to pull her shadows to hide them, a sliver of his wrist against a sliver of bare skin at her waist, so slight she hadn't noticed and so slight that he'd almost thrown up, and she'd pulled shadow so strong that a man had opened the shallow closet to the outside light and still not seen a single thing.
Inej hadn't noticed. She thought the whole thing was a dream. Kaz wasn't going to tell her anything different.
"Kaz?" Inej asks. She's a lot closer than she was last time Kaz looked. She's reaching for his hand, bare on the desk.
He snatches it back.
She's hurt by it, but she'll never say so. She knows he knows, and she knows that it hurts him to hurt her. She also knows that he can't help it. He's been getting better, over time. The thought no longer makes him collapse, unable to breathe. He's still not able to touch her, skin to skin.
"Kaz…" she says, instead. It's sad. She's only back in Ketterdam for a week, while her ship restocks and lets some of their rescues free.
"Armour," he says, heavily. "I know."
They sit with that knowledge for a minute, that distance. He loves her. She loves him. There should be nothing complicated about this, but they share a bed at night with her on top of the sheets so they never touch, and Kaz wakes every hour to just look at her, the fall of her hair and the rise of her chest and the way she keeps a hand on the knife at her hip even deep in sleep.
"Can I brush your hair?" he asks, eventually. It's a compromise. He can't touch her skin, but he can touch her hair, the sleek lengths of it. There is nothing of bloated flesh here.
Inej nods, settling herself on the edge of the bed. He sits behind her, taking the comb in his ungloved hands. He combs through her hair as carefully as he combs through information, and adds sweet-smelling oil with the same sensitivity as he picks locks. When it's smooth as silk in his hands, he braids it, a card-dealers' deftness in the twist and flick of his wrist.
Inej smiles when he's done, flipping it over her shoulder, running a hand down the weave of it. The first time he'd tried, the sections of the braid had been uneven. The second time, and every time after, it was perfect. Kaz does not like failures.
Inej gets up, then, the long lines of her stretching out towards the ceiling. She yawns, heading towards the wash basin. She sheds her sleep clothes as she goes, tossing her shirt towards his laundry basket - it's one of his shirts, he realises with a start, pilfered long ago.
"Little thief," he teases, hiding his surprise.
Inej shrugs, muscles and sinew moving beneath the bare skin of her shoulders. "You didn't notice when I took it months ago."
That's true. He hadn't noticed her taking it with her when she'd left the last time. He'd been too occupied with staring out the window towards the harbour, trying to spot any sails that looked like hers, and then by getting annoyed at himself and re-dedicating himself to sleepless nights staring at his ledgers.
They're going to steal a painting tonight. It's been a tradition - each time Inej returns, the whole crew gets together again, him and her and Jesper and Wylan and sometimes even Nina, and they find someone who has more than they should and even those odds, just a little. They have stolen documents and statues and paintings, all called priceless, yet all still able to be labelled with a number of Kruge.
None of it is priceless, not like the woman in front of him - the muscular definition of her back, the thickness of her midsection before it widens a little to her hips, the scar that runs parallel to her spine, disappearing under the band of her trousers. Kaz has stolen many pieces of art. None of them have ever held a candle to her. If anyone knew his thoughts, they would call him a romantic. He is not. He is simple and pragmatic, and it is just a fact; she is more beautiful than anything he has ever seen.
She's pulling on a sailor's shirt, loose white cotton, billowy in the sleeves. She has business at her ship today. She'll return to the Slats at noon, to finalise their plans.
There are leather straps, he knows, that wrap around the wrists of the shirt. Looseness is ideal for sun protection and ease of movement, but loose fabric at the wrist is a hazard. He's not surprised when she turns to him, leather wraps in her hands.
He takes them. Their fingers do not brush, but her skin is warm through the fabric as he wraps the leather tight, tying it with the knot she taught him once, the one her father taught her to use for securing tightropes.
It's a joke between them, and she laughs when she looks down and sees it. He presses a kiss to the leather, fast, and looks up quickly enough to catch the dark blush on her cheeks.
"I'll see you for lunch," she says, stepping back.
"You will," he replies. It's not quite a goodbye, but it is a promise. It ties them to each other, even as she cracks open the window a little more and slips out into the dawn, heavy sea shoes still silent on his roof.
He returns to his books, only remembering to wipe the smile from his face when there's a sharp rap at the door. It's Pim, which means his day has truly begun.
They see each other again at lunch, in a wafflehouse not too far from Wylan's estate or from the Slats. Nina still doesn't have her usual appetite, but she's there, and she's breathing, and that's all any of them have asked from her. Inej arrives after Nina, slipping into the booth to sit across from Kaz. She doesn't tangle their legs together, but she's so close that he can feel the heat of her calves next to his own, their shoes pressed together lightly.
Nina raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't have time to say anything before Wylan and Jesper pile in, hands clasped and arguing about something inconsequential.
They eat first, then pull the building plans out onto the table. It's a mansion, not far from Wylan's, three stories and heavily fortified. Kaz had bribed three maids to confirm which room the painting was in, and that was now marked in red on the parchment.
"Just an art thief now, Brekker?" Nina teases, raising an eyebrow. There's no safe marked on the blueprints.
Kaz scoffs. "Not in the least. It just draws less suspicion to the Dregs."
"How have you even been selling these, anyway?" Wylan asks, glancing a hand over the scaled-down sketch of the painting.
Inej and Kaz exchange a glance. It's simple; the next time Inej takes down a ship, she'll find it wrapped in oilskin in the hold, much to the surprise of the captain. Having rightfully won it, she'll be free to sell it in the next port. Money goes directly or indirectly from the pockets of scum into saving the lives of people they would enslave. Simple, clean, and righteous enough for Inej to have smiled when he'd suggested it.
As far as the Stadwatch can figure, the fine art that vanishes every month or few and then reappears at foreign ports, seized from slaving ships, cannot possibly be linked to Ketterdam's gangs.
"Pim says the Stadwatch are still clueless," he tells the others, "but Anika has overheard the Black Tips. They know it's us, but we don't know what they're planning."
Jesper lets out a low whistle. "Dirtyhands, being upfront about the unknowns in his plans? Kaz, you're going soft with old age."
"He's only nineteen," Inej says. Before Jesper can derail them again, she points at the plans. "Kaz, is here where you want us to enter?"
It's a balcony, on the second storey. Inej can scale the sheer wall in silence and darkness, then throw down a rope to haul the rest of them up. Kaz will pick the lock, and they'll be in
Together, they'll move as much as they possibly can of the room around, silently making it look completely trashed, which is why they need all of them. Then they'll take the one painting they're there for, and leave onto the balcony again. Jesper will use his grisha abilities to work the lock closed again, as if locked from the inside, and then they'll descend the building and walk away.
It's a good plan.
"Street lights?" Jesper asks.
Kaz nods at Wylan. "Freak loss of gas supply earlier today, down that whole street."
"It'll still be light," Nina says. "Ketterdam has horrific light pollution."
"It'll be dark," Inej says. It's a promise. She can make it dark. As far as grisha go, Inej is strong, and she has been calling shadows for years.
"The house is guarded most laxly two hours before dawn," Kaz tells them. "Only one guard for all three storeys, and he doesn't like climbing the stairs. If he finds us, Inej will knock him out before he can identify us. We'll wear masks."
There are no further issues or disagreements, so they all head back to their respective beds to catch a few hours of sleep before the excitement.
It's a good plan, and they're a good team. It all goes accordingly, Inej a dark smear against the darker night as she pulls them up, weaving shadows around the borders of the room so that they can see as they systematically dismantle it. They leave with a square painting rolled up and tucked inside Kaz's coat, completely undisturbed.
It only goes wrong when they're halfway across Ketterdam, taking a circuitous route back to the Slats. Jesper and Wylan are already gone, having split off to go back to the Van Eck mansion, so it's just Kaz, Inej and Nina when they're suddenly surrounded by Black Tips. They're in a cemetery; there are plenty of hiding places to spring out from.
"Well," Kaz says, pulling his mask from his face and taking the leather wrap off the crow-top of his cane. They may as well know who they've got. "Why not betray us to the Stadwatch?"
He already knows, of course, but it's good to see them mutter amongst themselves.
"Maybe we won't settle for a miserly reward," one of them calls, eventually.
It's true. Their plan is to steal the current painting, find out where they've been stashing the rest of it, and then sell all of it.
Kaz laughs at them. "We've already sold everything," he tells them. "Your spiders are just too shit to have worked it out. This wasn't worth risking all-out war over."
"You're not on Dregs land," their leader, a skinny boy so low down the ranks that Kaz doesn't even know his name, says.
"That's true," Inej says. "Maybe you'll avoid war. Just leave now, and we'll forget about it."
By all rights, she shouldn't be speaking for him anymore. He's not going to stop her. She's just as capable of giving his word as she ever was.
"No," says the leader. "We all talked. We all agreed. The Dregs have too much power, now. That ends tonight."
Inej lets her knife fly before the boy even finishes speaking, but Kaz knows it won't matter even as the boy hits the ground. He wasn't the true leader.
That becomes even more evident now, as from behind more and more gravestones gang members step out, mainly Black Tips and Dime Lions, but with a few members from gangs in parts of Ketterdam that don't even border with the Dregs.
Too late, Kaz recognises his mistake. He's been too happy, too settled in his position. Of course the rest of the gangs hate the stability and the size the Dregs are enjoying. Of course they want to take revenge.
It's concerning that none of his spiders so much as noticed this revolt brewing, but that's a problem for after they make it out of this. Well, for if they make it out of this.
Nina's spreading her hands. She turns to Kaz. "I can take maybe a third," she whispers to him. "There's a lot of corpses, but I'm not strong enough to pull all of them."
"Stop conspiring!" a voice yells from the back - one of the true leaders. They're at an impasse. The assembled gangs, while stronger than the three of them, are scared. The fear won't last long.
It happens very quickly.
Kaz takes off his gloves. The gangs attack.
Inej's knives sing, but that's drowned out by the earth rumbling as Nina pulls up corpse after corpse, reanimating, bones and joints and rotting flesh pulling up to fall upon their attackers. Nina's almost white, every vein in her neck standing out. They're all ankle deep in grave soil.
"That's as many as I can get," Nina grits out.
Looking around, Kaz can tell that it's not enough. Even now, the gangs are starting to regroup, pushing off jawbones and flinging them to the ground. There's a significant number of fresh bodies in the dirt, but Nina doesn't have the power to reanimate them, too.
She's brought them a moment to breathe, and a moment for Kaz to swallow down bile. He's been getting better. He can do this.
"Nina," he calls, and she turns to him. He reaches out one hand, wrapping shaking fingers around her wrist, and the world explodes.
He's got dirt in his hair and his throat is raw with contributing to the screams in the air, and the skin beneath his hands is warm and clammy with his own sweat, and the waters are rising and rising and rising. He can't afford to let go, so he doesn't.
Eventually, the noise and the sound around him stops, so he lets go. He falls to his knees, soft dirt on his bare palms, and retches.
"Kaz," says a voice behind him, and then Inej is handing him a flask of water. He drinks, then spits into the dirt. His vision stabilises - Nina had reburied any bones she'd taken, but around them pile a handful of fresh bodies, scratched open by bones.
"The rest of them ran," Nina says. She looks bright, eyes and face clean and glowing. It's the look of a grisha who's just used the full extent of her powers.
Kaz wishes he felt the same. Instead, he just feels hollow, rent apart. His hands ache, and he swears he can feel corpseflesh under them, even though his eyes tell him it's not true.
Inej hands him his gloves. He pulls them on, shaking.
"Do you think anyone noticed?" he asks. His voice is rawer than usual. He doesn't like it, the being unmade. He likes being presented to the outside world on his own terms, and this is very much not that.
"You holding my hand, when Inej is right there?" Nina jokes. "No, I think they were too scared by the skeletons charging at them. It's dark. No one was looking closely."
It was dark. Inej, protecting him as always.
"Good," he says, heavily. He's not sure he has the strength to stand, let alone walk.
It's not the amplification that takes it out of him, it's the touch.
He uses his cane to push himself up, off his knees. Once he's standing, each next step seems possible.
Inej shadows him on one side, eyes full of concern and a little anger. He should have told her.
"How long have you been an amplifier?" Nina asks. He wants to snap at her, but he doesn't have the energy.
"My whole life," he says, then, mostly to Inej, "Jordie was a fabricator."
"If you tell anyone, I'll kill you," he says to Nina, but the threat doesn't hold much weight. It's also not necessary. Nina is well-versed in keeping secrets.
Up in his room, at the top of the slats, Inej watches as he struggles with the buttons on his shirt, and eventually gives up, collapsing boneless and aching onto the mattress. His coat and the painting are discarded onto the desk.
"I wish I could touch you more," he mumbles into his pillow. He's still wearing his gloves.
"I know," Inej says. The bed barely tilts as she slips onto it, lying beside him. It's easy to synchronise his breathing to hers.
"I could help you all so much," he says.
The bedframe does shake, then, as she sits up. She's furious, he can tell, surprised.
"Kaz, it's your body. You shouldn't have to. It's up to you. It hurts you."
Ah. He'd thought she'd be mad about all the times in the past he could have been useful, but this makes sense too - Inej, always so good, even when the world tries to crush it out of her.
"Just the memories hurt," he tells her, "not the amplifying."
She's silent.
"And," he adds, petulant even though he'll never admit to it, "I'm getting better."
"You are," she says, at last, and by the shifting of the blankets he can tell that she's laid down again, back to him, front to the door and window, at least one knife held in her hands.
The sheets are clean and dry. There is no water rising here.
Kaz goes to sleep.
When he wakes, the first thing he does is groan and pull off his gloves, stretching out his stiff hands. His throat is sore and everything aches a little more than usual.
Inej is already up, sitting in the window, backlit by the dawn. "You should sleep more," she says.
Kaz refuses. He goes to the wash basin and washes off the grime of the fight, the gravedirt that has lingered on his hands and been streaked onto his face.
"You've been thinking about it," he tells Inej when he's dressed again, feeling much more human. "What you could do with my amplification."
She doesn't deny it.
He knows her limits, because he has to. She can pull dense darkness to fill an average room, but not much more. She's powerful, but not as much as other shadow summoners, not like the Darkling of Ravka.
"I would never ask that of you," she says, firmly. He believes her.
"I'm not asking," he says, rolling his eyes. "I'm offering."
He holds out his hand. This can't be worse than last night, he thinks, and then there's a featherlight touch against the back of his fingers.
The waters rise, but not much. Kaz breathes through it, focusing on the rasp of Inej's callouses.
Darkness floods over them, heavy, comforting, a black blanket over his shoulders. He can't see Inej, but he can feel her, the pressure of her fingers, the rise and fall as they breathe together.
The calm gets disrupted quickly by a banging on the door.
"Boss!" Pim yells through it. "Everything's gone blackout! What do we do?"
The shadows rush in towards Inej, tangling Kaz's hair as they go. The room returns to the early morning light. Kaz looks at Inej, and she's laughing, head tilted back, hand falling from his to clutch at her belly.
"Nothing!" Kaz shouts back to Pim, and then he's laughing too, light with relief, so light it lifts him out of the waters in his mind and he can turn and reach for Inej's hand again. He can hold on for long enough to tug her close and press a kiss to her cheek.
"I'm getting better," he tells her, still smiling, and then he has to go and pretend his future isn't bright and filled with laughter in front of the rest of his gang, in order to crush the chaos that's risen from Inej accidentally plunging half the street into darkness.