Chapter Text
Kaz Brekker had so many secrets
Inej would know, she’s been the keeper of a great deal of them for some time now. At first, she thought it exhausting, to have so many things no one must ever know. Now, she knows for a fact that she was right. It is exhausting.
Kaz Brekker is exhausting.
“I need you to pick up something from the tanners.”
Inej stretches out her arms as she sits on the floor of the attic room facing away from him as he speaks, “It wouldn’t kill you to be polite, Kaz.”
“For all you know, Wraith, it just might. Get it done, and come find me after.”
“I’m here to pick up a package, it should be under Kvot.”
A smiling boy with golden red curls passes her an envelope, “It was left here for you last night, let’s pray it’s good news.”
She doesn’t let the uncertainty show on her face. Inej doesn’t want to ruin whatever sweet daydream this young man created for the task he was given, “Thank you.” Inej frowns, realizing a mistake, “I’m sorry, you gave me two-”
The young man’s face turns vibrant red, “Uh, right I’ll take the other one.”
Inej hands the top envelope back to the no longer smiling boy, “It says that one’s for Veldt”
A moment of relief visibly washes over him, it must be nice to be allowed such freedom in expression, to wear your heart on your sleeve like that, “Thank you. Have a lovely day.”
She leaves the shop, and turns the corner into an alley. Using her knife she carefully unseals the envelope and pulls out the note inside.
It’s rude to read someone else’s mail, Wraith.
Inej rolls her eyes, “Oh like that isn’t most of the jobs you give me.” she mutters to herself
The tanner has taken on a new assistant. He’s under the dregs protection for now. Tonight, take Jesper and bring the kid to the backroom of the crow club. He answers to Wylan Hendriks.
-KB
Inej places the note back in the envelope and reseals the wax by pressing the back of the envelope to a hot pipe. Then she sets out to find Kaz.
She finds him in fifth harbor, menacing the other dregs. He doesn’t turn to address her, just reaches his hand out and she places the envelope in it as she passes by to stand at his back, “You have your orders?”
“What was the point of that?”
Kaz tucks the envelope into his coat, “It seemed only fair that you knew you’ve been found out. I thought you would appreciate the honesty.”
“Where can I find Jesper?”
“Do I look like his keeper? You’re competent enough at what you do, I'm sure you can find him.”
Sometimes how little Kaz cares is comforting.
She spent too much time in the stifling presence of alphas who use their designation as an excuse to push too aggressively, suck all the air out of a room, engulf everything as if it is theirs by right.
Not that Kaz Brekker doesn’t have a God complex, but it’s refreshing to not be hovered over constantly. She is the wraith, and not even Dirtyhands can keep eyes on her.
Most of the time though, it’s another thing about Kaz that makes her want to shake him. Jesper is his second; by all rights he should be Kaz’s beta but instead he sends Inej on another wild hunt through the city to go find someone any sane person would be keeping at their side.
He just doesn’t care . Not about Jesper, or the other dregs, or-
The only thing Kaz cares about is whatever scheme he’s cooked up this week to make more money for Per Haskell, or piss off some mercher, or scare off the other gangs from Fifth Harbor. The people don’t matter to him, they are all just pieces on his strategy board to be moved around at will.
Kaz was right, she does appreciate the honesty.
In the long run, it would have been more cruel to give her any scrap of hope that she might be important to him.
But she is just his Wraith.
And she is good at what she does.
She found Jesper walking the East Stave, which was rather convenient, she hated having to search the gambling houses for him.
She walks up next to him, “Jesper.”
He jumps, “Woah! Hey, Wraith! You walk quiet!”
Inej smiles, “Really? Who would have thought?”
“Yea, yea, what are you up to?”
“You and I have a job from Kaz.”
Jesper paused for a second, then nodded,“Right, right, he was trying to tell me about that last night I think, then that fight on the second floor started.”
Inej winced, “You were there for that? I just heard about it later after I came back from dinner.”
“Yup, it got bad . Then the old man started shouting from his office and I swear Inej, Kaz looked ready to burn the whole Slat to the ground after that. You know when he gets like quiet growly angry? That one. Saints, it had me on edge and I didn’t even do anything . Sometimes, I wish he’d just yell.”
“I don’t.”
Jesper shrugged, “Fair, I guess. You wanna grab something to eat?”
Inej crossed her arms, “Jesper, we are supposed to be on a job.”
He knocked into her a bit with his shoulder good-naturedly, “Oh, c’mon. Boss pissed you off. I can tell. You smell all prickly. Let’s go get dinner, my treat, huh? You can’t be at peak performance on an empty stomach.”
Inej gave in with a small laugh, “Okay Jesper, okay, we’ll get dinner.”
Jesper claps his hands together, “Perfect!” They turn to walk down a different road, “So, what's this job again?”
“The tanner has a new employee, Wylan Hendricks”
“So?”
“We’re grabbing him and bringing him to Kaz”
Jesper sighed, “Of course we are.”
Jesper smiles at the young man Inej met earlier. “Uh, pickup for Veldt? My boss just got back to me, sorry I’m so late.”
The boy smiles, blinking a few too many times like he was trying to stay awake, “No problem at all.” He passes Jesper the other envelope, Inej notices that he doesn’t even glance down at it, just hands it over. Odd to not double check, especially after he passed her the wrong one earlier.
Jesper leans his arm onto the counter, “Thanks, hopefully business stays as it is. It would be a terrible loss to not stop by again tomorrow.”
Inej covers her mouth, smothering the laughter that was about to burst through. Really Jesper? You have to flirt right now?
The young man’s blush overtakes his face once more, “Perhaps you don’t need orders to visit again…if you’d like.”
Jesper raises an eyebrow, “Is that an invitation?”
“It’s not nothing- shit! I almost forgot!” he turns and rushes to the back returning with a long cloak, “This was also in the order.”
“Well, thank goodness we stopped to chat, huh? I’m Jesper.”
“Wylan,” Inej feels her stomach drop, “It’s nice to meet you Jesper.” She sees Jesper tense, his body language subtly shifting to something more rigid.
“Have a nice night Wylan.” Jesper walks back towards where she is hiding in the shadows outside and passes her the envelope, “Why is it always the cute ones?” He whines to himself.
“It is almost never the cute ones. Most of the time it’s old rich merchers and their accountants.” Inej popped open the seal on the envelope and pulled out the note.
“For you maybe.” Jesper replied, sulking.
Inej read out the note, “He’ll start feeling the effects by six bells, get him out before seven and a half or you’ll be carrying him back…Jesper what’s the time?”
Jesper was already moving, “Uhhh too late, let’s go”
Inej scrambled to shove the note in her pocket following after him, “Did he not give you a time to get this done”
“It’s hilarious that you think boss tells me anything at all.”
Whatever it was in his system was luckily not too terribly dramatic. Their target was leaning over the side of a small bench outside the shop. Jesper threw the cloak over him and got an arm around his waist lifting him to his feet, “Hey, can’t pass out on us yet” he urged nervously.
Wylan didn’t respond.
“He’s-“ Inej cleared her throat, “He’s still breathing right?”
“Yea, yea he’s fine. I’ll try to move him like this until we get back, little help?”
Inej ran over wrapping the young man’s other arm around her shoulders and taking on some of his weight, “At least he’s light”
Jesper grunted, “Small blessings. If anyone asks, he's our drunk cousin.”
“None of us look related, Jesper.”
“Okay, he’s my boyfriends drunk cousin.”
“That’s a terrible cover.”
“Which makes it the perfect lie, keep moving.”
Most of their walk back was silent. It made Inej uneasy. Not because she had any problem with silence, most days she found she preferred it, but it was never silent with Jesper around. She started talking to fill the void between them, “This is weird right?”
Jesper looked up to meet her eyes as they kept shuffling along,“Yea, that’s just what I was thinking…it doesn’t seem like Kaz, but maybe it's one of those times it only feels like he’s completely lost it.”
“It's sloppy and-” She sighed, adjusting the way she was holding Wylan’s weight, “and was drugging him completely necessary? ”
Jesper shook his head, “He didn’t even have a weapon, no knife, nothing. I’m used to not knowing the whole plan, but normally I know I’m out of the loop and can kinda feel that Kaz has it all figured out beyond me…” Jesper trailed off and shrugged, “I don’t know what is off about this job.”
They walked a few more blocks before it came to Inej, “It’s a bad use of resources. The entire plan feels off because it's inefficient.” She goes through the routes they had taken all day to get where they are headed now on the route back to the club, “There is no point in having me make three trips between two places in one day, and why would he ask you to help me? Why ask either of us at all? This isn’t our specialty, grabbing a man and bringing him back to Kaz is a bruiser's job.”
Jesper’s frown deepened, “Which means this is either a pointless job to get us out of the way or he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it.”
“Of course, because the possible reasons could only exist in opposition to each other. How else would we know them to be Kaz’s motivations at all?”
Jesper snorted, “Careful there, you’re starting to sound like Zenik.”
Inej blushed, “Hush, Nina gets much more worked up than that. The comparison is an insult to her love for the dramatic. Have you seen her recently?”
“Yea, snuck into White Rose to bring her chocolate biscuits during lunch.”
“You had to sneak in?” Inej had followed Kaz on a few of his trips to the East Stave, the house of the white rose had always seemed to welcome him, if with a little bit of nose wrinkling at the dregs lieutenant dragging the scent of the harbor into their perfumed halls.
“While my barrel flash is the best thing to ever grace these wretched alleys, it got me some pretty mean looks when I tried to walk in and request their tailor. I’m no wraith, but I can still climb trellis’ like any other misguided teenage punk, it was fine.”
“How is she?”
“Well, she hates the Kefta they have her wear, apparently it's itchy and cheap and she wants to burn it and then burn Kaz for setting her up in such a place.”
Inej smiled, “She knows it's the safest place for her to be right now.”
“Uh huh. But she’s still Nina. She’s always going to have something to say about it.”
They bring Wylan through the back alley entrance to the Crow Club. The Barrel at night isn’t exactly a well-lit low crime utopia, but still. No one wants to be caught with an unconscious omega at any time of day. Especially not carrying them into a place of business, that would raise too many eyebrows even from criminals.
In the backroom of the club, Kaz is sitting in the vault with two other people. A man with short cropped blond hair, wearing the cloak of the Madman. He is bleeding sluggishly from a cut over his eyebrow. On the opposite side of Kaz is a woman. Her brown hair in a once neat braid laying like a crown at the top of her head. She’s wearing a blue dress in the style of the Lost Bride. There's a wreath of bruises forming around her throat. She is all restrained fury. Though, that isn’t uncommon of her when she’s been left with Kaz for too long.
“Nina?”