There’s a storm coming in from the Diep Expansie. It rolls and dances on the horizon, dark like the wine-dark saltwater lapping at the legs of the steady, sturdy wooden dock. Kaz Brekker watches it approach with overcast, narrowed eyes.
The twist is that he isn’t really watching the storm.
Kaz watches a warship, tall and dangerous and beautiful, dark wood stark against the backdrop of promised rain, as she follows the gusting wind into Ketterdam’s Fifth Harbor. To his left, just a foot between the two of them, Jesper whistles and taps the pearl handles of his darling revolvers with dark brown fingertips. To his left, Wylan Hendriks smiles, happy and excited, as he listens to Jesper’s tune and watches the approaching ship. The three of them aren’t waiting for the storm billowing on the horizon, but for the storm waiting on the approaching warship, held safely within the bodies of two friends.
Or allies, Kaz thinks. But ‘friends’ feels fitting enough.
Then Sankta Marya’s Deliverance is docking with the shouting of experienced, well-paid sailors and Kaz is thoroughly distracted from his musings by a confident, familiar voice calling out, “Raise the sails!” from just out of view, so different from the soft voice he used to hear every other night. The bustle of the ship’s deck only increases from there, ropes pulled as sails rise and a heavy anchor drops down into the murky depths. A gangplank lowers and a figure, undeniably familiar, comes stepping down onto the dock. Jesper and Wylan both grin.
“Saints, I’ve missed you all so much,” Nina laughs, pulling Jesper, tall and gangly, down into a tight, warm, sturdy hug. She pulls Wylan in too a moment later, grins all around, and Kaz grips the crow’s head of his cane just a little tighter.
Then, of course, Nina parts from the hug and her eyes scan the small group to focus on Kaz.
“Brekker,” she says, suddenly calm and serene.
“Zenik,” Kaz replies, slowly arching a dark eyebrow. Silence reigns for two seconds.
“Barter your way into any pigeons’ pockets lately?”
“Ask a politician if they’re a conman next time, you’ll get the same answer.”
Nina laughs, bright, sharp, and full. “Point taken,” she says, cheeks carrying a rosy flush from the nipping sea-wind, and offers him a steady, fair hand.
Kaz takes it, calm and silent, curling his gloved fingers around her palm. Nina grips back and shakes and doesn’t say a word about how he used to hesitate. The motion and pressure and faint warmth through leather do more for Kaz than just his stitched second skin could do on its own, proving to some deep section of his brain that she’s alive and breathing and well.
“Inej is still coming, right?” Jesper asks, calloused fingers back to tap-tap-tapping against his revolver handles, changing speed and pattern with no rhyme or reason that anyone but Jesper can recognize. “She didn’t get eaten by very large crocodiles?”
Nina snorts and lets go of Kaz’s hand, settling both fists on both hips. Kaz settles his hand back on top of his cane’s head and lets out a breath at how he didn’t tremble at the touch, skin against glove.
“Of course not,” Nina says. “I would have rescued her before it could happen. She didn’t get close enough to Novyi Zem anyway.”
Kaz’s gaze flicks to the gangplank at a subtle, silent movement. A Wraith of the sea, disembarking from her warship, pauses halfway across the gangplank to smile at Kaz on dark, unpainted lips. Then she finishes the short journey, stepping up right behind Nina. She waves at Wylan, who startles, grins brightly, and waves back.
Nina frowns at Wylan for a moment, brows connecting in confusion, then groans.
“She’s right behind me?”
“Right behind you,” Jesper confirms with a wide, crooked grin.
“Saints.” Nina turns around and looks down at Inej with no small aura of fond perplexion. “The gangplank creaked when I walked on it.”
“The world spins for Captain Ghafa,” Jesper laughs, slinging an arm over Wylan’s shoulders. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Only when I tell it to,” Captain Ghafa corrects, an amused smile on her face. It’s the one reserved for her friends, or so Kaz has gathered. She steps around Nina and over to Jesper on quiet boots, holds her arms out for him, and Jesper unslings his arm from Wylan’s shoulders to give her an obliging hug.
“We’ve all missed you,” Jesper says, cheek pressed down against salt-tousled black hair, braided back against the wind and sea spray. “The Barrel is louder without you.”
“I’m not sure that’s how that works,” Inej laughs, light and sweet, as she pulls away a few gentle moments later.
“Well, you didn’t see it, did you?”
“You can’t prove him wrong if you haven’t seen it,” Wylan agrees, pulling Inej toward his side and into a gentle, easy to break half-hug as Nina leads them toward the cobblestones of solid ground instead of the heavy wooden planks of Fifth Harbor, Inej curling her arm around his side as they walk.
Kaz joins them, of course he does—there’s only one way off the dock that isn’t onto Sankta Marya’s Deliverance or into the sea, after all. He would never take the latter as long as he was drawing breath, and he has no reason to take the former. Inej’s second-in-command will take good care of her ship while she’s gone.
He does, however, turn toward the Barrel after they leave Fifth Harbor instead of toward the Financial District.
“Kaz,” Inej says, stopping and turning to face him. “You’re leaving already?”
“I have business in the Barrel,” he says, the words bitter on his tongue but calm past his teeth. “I’ll join you all later.” He puts his hands on the head of his cane and leans on it just a little. The approaching storm is making his old wound shift nervously under the surface of his skin. Quiet. Waiting.
The disappointed, hurt look in Inej’s eyes chips at his resolve. Matching looks in Nina, Wylan, and Jesper’s eyes chip away at it a little more.
“I’ll visit the Hendriks’ residence tomorrow,” he says, not only for them but for himself as well. “I have business today, things that can’t wait. I’m still a Barrel boss, even if everyone’s together again.”
Kaz studiously ignores the way he avoided the word ‘friends’. He ignores the flash of pain across their faces at the word ‘everyone’. It’s a little harder to ignore the subtle, relieved look in Wylan’s eyes when he says Hendriks instead of Van Eck.
“Tomorrow,” Inej says.
“Tomorrow.”
Kaz turns to go. He doesn’t look back, just limps purposefully toward the Crow Club, letting the click of his cane against cobblestones and the determination in his eyes scare away pigeons and Ketterdam folk alike.
Behind him, the storm on the horizon continues to slowly give chase.
To avoid confusion from readers of the books, I did change the name of Inej’s warship. The original name was The Wraith, but it didn’t feel quite right for her and for this story, so The Wraith became Sankta Marya’s Deliverance. Sankta Marya of the Rock is a canonical Suli saint, the patron saint of those who are far from home. Given that Inej’s ship sails with the purpose of attacking slave ships on the True Sea and rescuing the slaves, 'deliverance' felt fitting.
Thank you for reading!