Kaz Brekker, nineteen, wakes in a cold sweat. His bare chest heaves as he drags in lungfuls of cold, wet, dirty Ketterdam air, coughing on it once, twice before he remembers how to truly take it in.
He hasn’t dreamt of his fall five years ago—or of learning how to walk again—in months. But now, shirtless and out of breath, looking down at bare, shaking hands, his entire body clammy and cold, he’s vividly reminded of why he always hated that Ghezen-damned dream.
It takes him another eight seconds of slowly breathing more steadily to register the sound of rain hitting the slanted roof above his head, harsh and unrelenting. The storm on the horizon of the Diep Expansie must have arrived in the night, unsurprising given the distance, and rain in Ketterdam is rarely anything but either woeful dripping or a true deluge.
All Kaz can think of at the moment, though, is the way his hands shake faintly as he grabs his cane and sets the end against the wooden floorboards. He hesitates, then grits his teeth against that hesitation and stands up. He hasn’t hesitated about this in weeks and he doesn’t want to start again now.
The sudden fire racing up his leg, making it buckle and sending him right back to his narrow bed, ass smarting a little at the fall, shows him exactly why it had been right of him to hesitate. Kaz holds back a sharp curse, settles it between his teeth and tongue for a moment, and swallows it. He tries again, pushing to his feet, and when he leans heavily on his cane, more than he has in a while—the weight he knows to put on his cane when his leg is like this—the pain isn’t as bad. It’s almost just a sharp ache.
He doesn’t thank Inej and Nina’s saints when the pain nearly stays the same through slowly getting dressed, but it’s a very near thing. He does vow to never tell Nina or Inej about the temptation. He would do just about anything to stay in bed today, maybe even burrow under his covers just like when he was six and he didn’t want to go do his chores in their little farmhouse in Lij. Jordie would come into his room and pounce on his bed, teasing him and reassuring him in equal measure, until he eventually got up and ran after Jordie to go milk their dairy cow.
He doesn’t have a Jordie to help him this time.
But, even then, he always got up. He always did what he needed to do.
It takes him two minutes to get downstairs, in the end, and Kaz will admit to himself that he counted the seconds as he struggled down each step, lower and lower, until his feet were finally stable on the ground floor of the Slat.
There are eyes on Kaz when he looks up from his shining black shoes. Kaz surveys the ground floor and its occupants, each one known to him by name, and his eyes narrow in the direction of one new Dregs member by the name of Walter Swier. The tall, skinny, balding white man doesn’t cow in the face of unblinking Crow eyes, but it’s a near thing and they both know it. It’s easy to be intimidated by seeing your boss’ face for the first time, even when he’s about half your age.
“It’s rude to stare,” Kaz says, dangerously soft with a rough edge from his rough night and the ache in his leg. “Do you have business for me, or are you wasting your time counting Crows?”
“Andries didn’t tell me you had a limp when he brought me on,” Walter says.
The Slat goes deathly still, the strongwoman guarding the door letting out a slow, wide eyed breath. Not many people have the nerve to say something like that to Kaz’s face. Fewer still have the nerve to do it inside the Slat.
“I doubt he told you I have black hair,” Kaz says, “or how tall I am. Did he?”
“No, but—”
“So why,” Kaz interrupts, quiet, and then pauses to limp across the room. The occupants stay silent as he walks, hanging onto every word. The movement aches from below his knee to above it, and the thump of his cane on wooden floorboards nearly echoes in the unnatural silence. He stops in front of Walter. He places both gloved hands on his crows head and steadies himself. He leans toward Walter, close enough to see the freckle on the bridge of his nose and the green in his scared blue eyes. Walter is a head taller than him, but the way he’s looking at Kaz makes it seem as if Kaz looms over him like the demjin he sometimes allows himself to mimic.
“So why,” Kaz repeats in a soft whisper, “is a limp so important to you?”
Walter’s Adam's apple jumps. His nostrils flare. “I,” he stammers, eyes widening in the face of Kaz’s dangerous calm. “It’s just that...”
“Spit it out,” Kaz says, eerily composed, “before I pull it out of your throat myself.”
“How— How can someone like you have a limp like that?”
“Someone like me, Swier?”
“A boss. How can a Barrel boss like you have a limp like that?”
Once Walter is bleeding from half a dozen cuts and blubbering for mercy the strongwoman at the door, Jooske, takes great pleasure in manhandling him through the Slat and throwing him out on his ass into the heavy, biting rain of Ketterdam’s storm.
Kaz, as Jooske returns to her post by the door and crosses muscular arms over her chest, takes great pleasure in sitting down in a comfortable chair by the spitting fireplace, setting his cane aside, cleaning blood from his knife, and burning Walter’s contract to ashes. He’ll have to tell Andries to mention his limp before a gang member is signed on in the future. Still, how Walter got this far into Ketterdam without hearing of the cane-carrying Bastard of the Barrel is a mystery even to him.
But no respite lasts long for this particular Barrel boss, regardless of rain or shine.
“Boss,” says Dhamiria as she approaches him, a sharp woman with a soft black gaze and dark brown skin, glowing gold in the light of lamps lit to combat the storm outside. “Three Gray Bulls were spotted two blocks from Fifth Harbor and heading that way.”
Kaz’s spine straightens. “When?”
“Two minutes ago. They have kerosene.”
The Gray Bulls are a new Barrel gang, young and fledgling and awkward, disorderly but able to make up for it with a few big brawlers and sheer intimidation. Fifth Harbor isn’t theirs, every gang in Ketterdam worth their salt knows that much, and after the skirmish two weeks ago Kaz knows the Gray Bulls are well aware of which gang it does belong to.
As such, the phrases kerosene, Gray Bulls, and Fifth Harbor all strung together can only spell trouble.
Kaz looks out a window at the storm. It hasn’t eased yet, it probably won’t for another few hours, and just the thought of getting soaked out there is enough to make him wince. But Fifth Harbor is where Inej’s ship is docked and Kaz knows by now, from the letters she’d sent him, that she loves that ship like one of her deadliest Saints.
“Jooske,” Kaz calls across the floor. The brawler looks up and conversation across the room quiets. “I’m taking you, Floris, and Dhamiria to Fifth Harbor. Bring weapons.”
“When?” Jooske calls.
“Now.”
Before you ask, yes, Jooske is ABSOLUTELY a not-so-subtle reference to the fandom-beloved minor character Joost.