He’d flexed his hands in his gloves, listening to his roommates snore. I can best this , he told himself. He was stronger than this sickness, stronger than the pull of the water. When he’d needed to learn the workings of a gambling hall, he’d done it. When he’d decided to educate himself on finance, he’d mastered that too. Kaz thought of Imogen’s slow, closed-mouth smile and made a decision. He would conquer this weakness the way he’d conquered everything in his path.
He’d started small, with gestures no one would notice. A game of Three Man Bramble dealt with gloves off. A night spent with them tucked under his pillow. Then, when Per Haskell sent him and Teapot to lay a little hurt on a two-bit brawler named Beni who owed him cash, Kaz had waited until they’d had him in the alley, and when Teapot told Kaz to hold Beni’s arms, he’d slipped off his gloves, just as a test, something easy.
As soon as he made contact with Beni’s wrists, a rush of revulsion overtook him. But he was prepared and endured it, ignoring the icy sweat that broke over him as he hooked Beni’s elbows behind his back. Kaz forced himself to brace Beni’s body against his while Teapot reeled off the terms of his loan with Per Haskell, punctuating each sentence with a punch to Beni’s face or gut.
I’m all right , Kaz told himself. I’m handling this. Then the waters rose.
This time the wave was as tall as the spires on the Church of Barter; it seized him and dragged him down, a weight that he could not escape. He had Jordie in his arms, his brother’s rotting fish-belly body clutched against him. Kaz shoved him away, gasping for breath.
The next thing he knew, he was leaning against a brick wall. Teapot was yelling at him as Beni fled. The sky was gray above him, and the stink of the alley filled his nostrils, the ash and vegetable smell of garbage, the ripe tang of old urine.
“What the hell was that, Brekker?” screamed Teapot, face mottled with fury, nose whistling in a way that should have been funny. “You just let him go! What if he’d had a knife on him?”
Kaz registered it only dimly. Beni had hardly touched him, but somehow, without the gloves, it was all so much worse. The press of skin, the pliability of another human body so close to his.
“Are you even listening to me, you sorry, skinny little skiv?” Teapot grabbed him by his shirt, his knuckles brushing Kaz’s neck, sending another wave of sickness crashing through him. He shook Kaz until his teeth rattled.
Teapot gave Kaz the beat-down he’d had planned for Beni and left him bleeding in the alley. You didn’t get to go soft or give in to distraction, not on a job, not when one of your crew was counting on you. Kaz curled his hands into his sleeves, but never threw a punch.
It had taken him nearly an hour to drag himself from that alley, and weeks to rebuild the damage to his reputation. Any slip in the Barrel could lead to a bad fall. He found Beni and made him wish Teapot had been the one to deliver the beating. He put his gloves back on and didn’t take them off. He became twice as ruthless, fought twice as hard. He stopped worrying about seeming normal, let people see a glimmer of the madness within him and let them guess at the rest. Someone got too close, he threw a punch. Someone dared to put hands on him, he broke a wrist, two wrists, a jaw. Dirtyhands , they called him. Haskell’s rabid dog. The rage inside him burned on and he learned to despise people who complained, who begged, who claimed they’d suffered. Let me teach you what pain looks like , he would say, and then he’d paint a picture with his fists.
At the ring, the next time Imogen laid her fingers on his sleeve, Kaz held her gaze until that closed-mouth smile slipped. She dropped her hand. She looked away. Kaz went back to counting the money.
Now Kaz rapped his cane against the morgue floor.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said to Nina, hearing his voice echo too loudly off the cold stone. He wanted out of this place as fast as possible.
They started on opposite sides, scanning the dates on the drawers, searching for a cadaver that would be in the appropriate state of decomposition. Even the thought ratcheted the tension in his chest tighter. It felt like a scream building. But his mind had conceived of this plan, knowing it would bring him to this place.
“Here,” Nina said.
Kaz crossed the room to her. They stood before the drawer, neither of them moving to open it. Kaz knew they’d both seen plenty of dead bodies. You couldn’t make a life on the streets of the Barrel or as a soldier in the Second Army without encountering death. But this was different. This was decay.
At last, Kaz hooked the crow’s head of his cane under the handle and pulled. The drawer was heavier than he’d anticipated, but it slid open smoothly. He stood back.
“We’re sure this is a good idea?” said Nina.
“I’m open to better ones,” said Kaz.
She blew out a long breath and then pulled the sheet away from the corpse. Kaz thought of a snake molting.
The man was middle-aged, his lips already blackening with decay.
As a little boy, Kaz had held his breath whenever he’d passed a graveyard, certain that if he opened his mouth, something terrible would crawl in. The room tilted. Kaz tried to breathe shallowly, forcing himself back to the present. He spread his fingers inside his gloves, felt the leather tug, grasped the weight of his cane in his palm.
“I wonder how he died,” Nina murmured as she peered at the gray folds of the dead man’s face.
“Alone,” Kaz said, looking at the man’s fingertips. Something had been gnawing at them. The rats had gotten to him before his body was found. Or one of his pets. Kaz pulled the sealed glass container he’d lifted from Genya’s kit out of his pocket. “Take what you need.”
Standing in the clock tower above Colm’s suite, Kaz surveyed his crew. The city was still cloaked in darkness, but dawn would come soon and they would go their separate ways: Wylan and Colm to an empty bakery to wait out the start of the auction. Nina to the Barrel with her assignments in hand. Inej to the Church of Barter to take up her position on the roof.
Kaz would descend to the square in front of the Exchange with Matthias and Kuwei and meet the armed stadwatch troop that would escort them into the church. Kaz wondered how Van Eck felt about his own officers protecting the bastard of the Barrel.
He felt more himself than he had in days. The ambush at Van Eck’s house had shaken him. He hadn’t been ready for Pekka Rollins to reenter the field on those terms. He hadn’t been prepared for the shame of it, for the memories of Jordie that had returned with such force.
You failed me. His brother’s voice, louder than ever in his head. You let him dupe you all over again.
Kaz had called Jesper by his brother’s name. A bad slip. But maybe he’d wanted to punish them both. Kaz was older now than Jordie had been when he’d succumbed to the Queen’s Lady Plague. Now he could look back and see his brother’s pride, his hunger for fast success. You failed me, Jordie. You were older. You were supposed to be the smart one.
He thought of Inej asking, Was there no one to protect you? He remembered Jordie seated beside him on a bridge, smiling and alive, the reflection of their feet in the water beneath them, the warmth of a cup of hot chocolate cradled in his mittened hands. We were supposed to look out for each other.
They’d been two farm boys, missing their father, lost in this city. That was how Pekka got them. It wasn’t just the enticement of money. He’d given them a new home. A fake wife who made them hutspot , a fake daughter for Kaz to play with. Pekka Rollins had lured them with a warm fire and the promise of the life they’d lost.
And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.
He scanned the faces of the people he had fought beside, bled with. He’d lied to them and been lied to. He’d brought them into hell and dragged them out again.
Kaz settled his hands over his cane, his back to the city. “We all want different things from this day. Freedom, redemption—”
“Cold hard cash?” suggested Jesper.
“Plenty of that. There are lots of people looking to stand in our way. Van Eck. The Merchant Council. Pekka Rollins and his goons, a few different countries, and most of this Saintsforsaken town.”