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It was all an unhealed wound in the end. Their whole team was shattered: Matthias, dead; Inej gone for large expanses of time; Nina off in Fjerda; Jesper and Wylan living on the Geldstraat; Kaz, alone.
It’d been an impromptu thing. Inej was back in Ketterdam for a month and she was itching for something to take her mind of a little girl she’d failed to save, and Kaz had never been one to refuse Inej.
A jewel heist. Done a thousand times before and yet still elating. Slip in, open the locks, slip out, have someone waiting to pack the bullets in if it all goes to shit.
“It should be easy enough,” Kaz said. “If Roeder’s information isn’t totally useless, that is.”
It was easy.
That was the problem.
It was too easy to break into the big house, rented by some couple that had just moved to Ketterdam. They had dismissed concerns on the safety of all their pretty jewels, swearing up and down to every paper and out there for any criminal and thief and safecracker to hear that their safe was impenetrable, but Kaz hadn’t even paused when he’d gotten inside, just scoffed and then his lockpicks were working away.
It was too easy to break into the house, and it was too easy to crack the safe. The jewels they’d flashed about gleamed when they opened it, but so did the eyes of the person sitting inside.
“Mr. Brekker,” he said. “It’s truly lovely to see you.”
The couple that lived in the house were flighty and rarely home. The jewels and the safe too obviously flaunted. The subpar spider that wasn’t Inej and would miss the fact that it was a set up.
Kaz didn’t move. He had seemed, at the time, perfectly unruffled by the appearance of the stranger, as though he had expected him to be there. He had just tipped his head.
“You see,” the man continued, “we’ve always wanted to know what makes a demon bleed.”
“Interesting,” Kaz said, softly. “Have you tried bullets?”
“We’ll have plenty of time to try.”
Several things happened at once. The first was Inej putting a blade through the throat of the man in the shadows behind her, even as three more men grasped her arms and began to pin her down. The second was Jesper firing several shots at the men behind Wylan, thereby leaving a space for his own pistols to be wrenched from his hands, the girl admiring them even as she stole them. The third was Kaz’s cane coming down hard on the wrist of the man in the vault, shattering it and sending his gun flying, pressing his own gun to the man’s temple.
The fourth was Kaz saying, “Put your weapons down or I kill him.”
“Kill me and they’ll kill the Wraith.”
Kaz’s hand twitched; infinitesimal, but enough.
“I thought so,” the man said. “I was in Hellgate for a while. I spoke to a Mr. Jan Van Eck there, and he had very much to say about the boy demon of the Barrel.”
“Did he mention, Mr. Reyvik,” Kaz said, voice low, “that I don’t like people threatening what’s mine.”
“He mentioned your greed, Mr. Brekker,” Reyvik said. “He mentioned how loose jewels would draw you like a moth to a flame.”
“Anyone in Ketterdam knows of my light fingers.”
“Those same fingers,” Reyvik said, froth beginning to build at the corners of his lips as he continued, “that appear gloved. You have the black hands of a demon, Mr. Brekker, a demon that is hidden in the body of a boy. I know a demon when I see one, and you, Brekker, are an affront to Ghenzen.”
“Mr. Reyvik,” Kaz said, still in that low, unflustered tone. “You’re an unfortunate man, I know that. Your wife and children have long since been in the grave. Your religious zeal will not fix that.”
“I’m not after a fix,” Reyvik snarled. “I’m after the removal of the demon that took them from me. I know you, Brekker, I see how you are ruled by the greed you claim to control, you’re a twisted spirit that recoils from Ghenzen and your stolen body cripples itself to try and eliminate you.”
“I understand revenge more than anyone else, Mr. Reyvik,” Kaz said. “But would you prefer a simpler life in the countryside where your wife and children are still alive? Imagine, for a moment, Tomas, that you could wake up to Elaine’s breathing by your ear, or little Aimeé and her baby brother laughing together. Imagine it.”
Reyvik’s eyes were red rimmed and his breathing was laboured, but his voice was steady. “I do not want to defy Ghenzen’s light,” he hissed. “I want to purge it. My wife and my children are dead, and you can keep their names out of your tainted mouth.”
“You will see them one way or another.”
“Not if you want your tethered soul to stay tethered. We can send the Wraith back to where it belongs. We would only spare it because it does not threaten our beloved Ketterdam.” Reyvik shifted under the barrel of the gun. “But you, Brekker, you are the twisted soul that must be removed. Let your stolen body rest. Let the boy who you have kept captive be free.”
Kaz grinned, a baring of the teeth and a threat. “Oh, Mr. Reyvik,” he said. “Why should I?”
“I’ll have your Wraith killed,” he hissed. “I’ll have Van Eck given to his father so he can finish the job himself. I’ll have Fahey’s fingers broken one by one until he’s no use to you. I’m sure you could walk out of here as well as you ever can, but I will make sure they won’t. They will die here, Brekker, unless you cooperate.”
“Does my cooperation require my death?”
“Not exactly,” Reyvik said. “I decided to be generous. A demon cannot help its nature, after all, and it is Ghenzen’s nature for mercy.”
“You’d be the first person in Ketterdam to say that,” Jesper muttered, then yelped as the girl guarding him jabbed him in the neck with his own gun.
“By all means,” Kaz said, sweeping his arm and, by extension, his cane out beside him. “Tell me.”
“I want to remove you from that boy’s body,” Reyvik said. “It won’t even take long. I won’t even harm you afterwards.”
“Like you could harm me,” Kaz said. “The closest you can get is harming the mortal shell.”
“I am being generous, Brekker,” he snapped. “Alive Wraith or dead Wraith.”
“Very well,” Kaz said, and let go of the gun. “I’d prefer to walk to wherever you’re taking me.”
“Kaz, what are you—”
“Shut her up,” Reyvik said. “We’ll send a messenger to give you the all clear when we have him in place. Hold them until then.”
Kaz made a gesture and Reyvik made his way out of the vault, more of his lackeys emerging from the shadows. It seemed as though the entire room had been designed to hold and hide as many people as possible; even the paintings swung open to reveal small rooms packed full of mercenaries and armaments. If Roeder had been any good—
Kaz followed him out the door.
*
“Well?” Kaz said, raising an eyebrow at the empty warehouse. “Is this it? Your taste in aesthetics is poor.”
Reyvik had managed to gain some composure on the walk over and thus refrained from scowling at him. “We have not completed our deal,” he said. “We must remove you from the body you inhabit.”
Kaz spread his arms. “Go ahead.”
“Drop the cane.”
“You’d deny a cripple his cane?”
“You won’t be needing it.”
Kaz ran an assessing eye over Reyvik. “And you’ll let them go?”
“Yes.”
He looked at him again, for a long, hard moment, then relinquished his cane, it falling to the floor with a clatter. “Okay,” he said. “Do your worst.”
For people clearly believing they were in the presence of an actual demon, they seemed quite happy to let him do the majority of the work for them, which Kaz was glad of. Instead of dragging him over to the table, they let him walk, let him lie down as they fastened the straps around him. Not locks, they knew well enough that it was pointless, but leather straps and buckles in awkward to reach places. Clever.
“You, boy,” Reyvik said. “Run and tell my men to let them go.”
The boy ran.
“Now, Brekker, where should we begin?”
“You could start by joining your wife in death,” he suggested, grinning with a bright flash of teeth when Reyvik scowled at him. He seemed quite good at scowling.
Reyvik turned to the sparse space behind him, pulling up a thin whip. “We can start here.”
The whip was longer than his hands and cruelly thin, but not the worst thing Kaz had ever been beaten with. By the end of this, he’d probably have unbuckled the buckles, and his greatest challenge would be keeping his leg underneath him and moving fast enough to get him out of here.
It cracked down on his chest hard, leaving a thin, stinging line of pain across him, and was shortly followed by another, and another, and another. It was unrelenting, and Kaz, distracted enough from the burning pain to find his fingers slipping from the buckle, had to give him credit for that.
Not enough, however, to avoid laughing in Reyvik’s face. “Is that the best you can do?” he sneered. “I was beaten better than that by an eleven-year-old.”
The whip struck his cheek, and he sunk his teeth into the inside of his cheek rather than react, even though he knew that there’d be a raised line cutting across his face, a hot, angry red.
He laughed again, despite his better judgement, and used Reyvik’s subsequent dropping of the whip to curl his fingers around the buckle pinning his wrist down. It involved him curling his fingers up and backwards, straining them and causing more pain than his subpar whipping had done.
The restraints, Kaz supposed, were clever.
“A Fabrikator made cane,” Reyvik said, slowly. “Perfectly weighted for breaking bones.”
Kaz went cold.
“You know,” Reyvik continued, tipping Kaz’s cane back and forth in his hands. “I was there when you crawled out the Barge in that dead boy’s body.”
“I know,” he said. “Why else would I kill the pretty Elaine?”
“Keep her name out of your filthy mouth!” Reyvik roared, punctuating his sentence with spittle and the swift strike of his own cane against his ribcage, the crunch of his bones breaking, wrenching a gasp from him. Reyvik laughed, cruelly, and said, “That’s better. That works much better than a simple whip.”
And then the cane flew again, and Kaz’s hand, just free of the buckle, cracked back against the table.
And then again, punching his breaths out of him over and over again, splinters of pain every time his own cane comes down upon him, a dull ache in the breath in between. The there wasn’t even that, just the methodical swing and the impact of the blow, hard and fast enough that he couldn’t catch a breath in between.
Then the cane came down on his bad leg, and it wasn’t just a gasp that escaped him. It was a yelp.
Reyvik laughed, and punched down on his leg with a fist. Kaz felt the spasm claim his body from him and clamped his eyes shut tight, and when the next swing came, he wasn’t ready.
“Music to my ears, Brekker,” Reyvik said with a low laugh. “Music to my fucking ears.”
Gunshots. Reyvik let the cane hit the ground again and marched up to the guards to demand to know what was going on, and Kaz twisted his wrist. Not broken, then, but likely fractured, from the sparks of pain that echoed through his battered body. Attempting to sit up aggravated further aches, the straps biting into already open wounds, his suit sticking to the blood that pooled underneath.
He reached for the buckles anyway. One, two, his second wrist free; within moments, the only straps left curled over his bad leg.
Reyvik barrelled back in, snatching up Kaz’s cane. “It’s your fucking Wraith,” he spat. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her. I fucking will. Blow this place, fucking blow it.”
Then he was gone again, and Kaz pried his leg free.
He nearly blacked out when he stood, and took a second to regain his breath, staggering forwards on his unsurprisingly uncooperative leg. There were no guards when he pulled open the warehouse door; it was nice, for a moment, to have something to hold him up.
Then he saw her, across the hall, slipping through a narrow door.
“Inej,” he said, let it fall out his mouth, half a pained groan, half a prayer.
She turned, saw him. He saw her expression light up, fall, shatter. “Kaz,” she said, already making the journey towards him, light feet crossing the ground in seconds. “Are you—”
The world exploded around them, metal and concrete and brick, a thousand spinning glass shards. A cacophony of sound, of light, dull moonlight on metal, on glass, Inej’s voice piercing through it all, calling his name. Pain. Suspension. Falling.
Impact.
*
Kaz awoke tied to a chair. Proper ropes, this time, the knots standard use for ships—Inej had showed him some of them. They were easy.
Or they would be, if someone didn’t have their fingers curled around his bad leg.
He thrashed against their grip instinctively, wrenching his leg further against the rope, choking on water that wasn’t there, pushing against the cold hands of the corpse.
“Mr. Brekker,” Reyvik said, cordial again now he’d gotten the other hand. Kaz’s eyes darted to the direction of his voice from under the cloth tied around his face; he wasn’t sure what that was for, but it couldn’t be good. “Pleasure of you to come back to us.”
“Fuck you,” he spat.
Reyvik’s fingers touched his jaw, and there was bile in his mouth, his body jerking away, unable to find solace but forcing him harder against more ropes, more webs of pain.
The fingers were removed, and he gasped for air so sharply he choked on the cloth.
“Now, Mr. Brekker,” he said. “Tell us where our holy flesh sends your tainted soul, or we’ll touch you again, and again, and again.”
“Fuck you.”
“As you wish.” Water. Corpses. Jordie. Drowning, choking, trapped, pushing and thrashing and—
“Water,” he gasped out, and it all drained away.
“Interesting. One moment, please.”
He took that moment to revel in the feeling of the leather still under his fingertips, at his one piece of luck in the whole shitshow.
Reyvik’s footsteps returned, and water splashed onto his face, his mouth, slow and steady and—
When he sucked in a breath, wet cloth clung to his skin and got pulled into his mouth, the steady flow of water unending and—
Kaz was nine again, weakly kicking his legs in Reaper’s Barge, fingers locked onto Jordie, cold, cold—
He was nineteen years old and drowning. He was nine years old and drowning.
He took a breath and wet cloth and water clung to him, drops splattering down his throat, and he slid from Jordie’s corpse enough to taste the water, icy cold and slightly salty and tasting like his brother, the plague, and death.
The water stopped, but the cloth clung to his face, still wet, still impeding his breathing.
He just breathed, great shuddering breaths, half in the present, half trapped in the murky waters of the past.
Reyvik pried the cloth from his face, surprisingly gentle. “Kaz?” he said. “I know this must be confusing for you, but just look at me for a moment.”
They thought they’d freed him, he realised. Purged the demon.
“Where am I?” he asked, making his voice as small and scared as possible. “Who are you?”
“Ah,” Reyvik said. “I am Mr. Reyvik and I am an honourable man of Ghenzen. Allow me to help you to some accommodation.”
“What happened, sir?”
“I know this must be very confusing for you right now, Kaz, but a terribly bad thing happened to you and we fixed it.”
“It hurts,” he murmured, casting his eyes down.
“Oh, I know. I know. Can you stand? Let me undo those knots.”
Unfortunately, standing wasn’t on the schedule after an exploding building falling on his head and a beating.
“Here, use this cane. Let me walk you to a hotel.”
“Oh, thank you Mr. Reyvik, sir. You’re very kind.”
“It’s no trouble, Kaz.”
If he went any further with the wide-eyes pigeon act he was going to end up laughing, so he was glad it didn’t take him too long to drag himself forward?, leaving just Kaz and and Reyvik in an alleyway.
“Mr. Reyvik, sir?”
“Yes, Kaz?”
Kaz punched him in the face, feeling his fractured wrist give more than he’d like it to.
“Brekker,” Reyvik snarled.
“I’m not a fucking demon,” he said, then kicked him hard enough in the head that he didn’t get back up.
It was time to drag himself back to the Geldstraat.
*
Wylan opened the door and, to his credit, didn’t scream, despite the fact that Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel, was bleeding on his doorstep and white knuckling his cane.
What he actually said was, “Okay. You’re alive. Thank fuck for that,” followed by Inej and Jesper’s names.
Shortly after that, he was settled down—seated, mostly because he couldn’t hold himself up any longer—and Inej was carefully wiping down his wounds, trying to avoid touch. There was more blood than he expected. It was probably why he kept fading in and out of consciousness.
“Ghenzen, Kaz,” Jesper said. “We thought you were dead.”
“I can’t control whether a building blows up or not.”
“We’re glad you’re not dead,” Inej said, fierce. “Never do that to me again. I’m furious.”
“You’re radiant,” he said, instead of anything sensible.
There was a solid moment of silence before Inej said, “I’m still furious at you.”
“Who is Reyvik?” Wylan asked, slightly too loud to cover the awkwardness.
“Religious fanatic,” Kaz replied. “Talks less about business and more about Ghenzen.”
“What did you do to him?”
“His wife wasn’t a fan of his devotion to someone else. I arranged for her and her children to have an accident, moving them out into the countryside. The funeral was useful for—”
“The art heist,” Jesper filled in. “One of the guards there had a nice waistcoat.”
“Is that the one you stole?” Inej asked.
“It was a good coat,” he said nostalgically. “It’s a shame I got shot in it. It was nice before then.”
“It had bloodstains.”
“They added character.”
“It was an eyesore before you covered it in blood,” Kaz said. “Good riddance.”
“It looked beautiful, fuck you.”
Wylan laughed, and it seemed contagious, because then all of them but Kaz were laughing, and even Kaz’s lips were turned up in a smile.
“You know,” Inej said. “That’s got to be the worst heist we’ve ever been on.”
“That’s true,” Jesper said. “We didn’t even steal anything. We just got beat up.”
“Speak for yourselves,” Kaz said, turning his uninjured hand over to reveal an ornate ring. “I was productive.”
“Kaz?”
“What.”
“Are you—proposing? To Inej? Whilst half dead?”
“Thank you for noticing, Wylan.”
*
”Mr. Reyvik,” Kaz said, looking down at the man in the bed even as he jumped in fright. “I’m sure you know why I’m here.”